Over one week this spring, Alexandra Eala became a superstar. She defeated former Grand Slam champions Iga Swiatek, Jelena Ostapenko, and Madison Keys to make it to the semifinals of the Miami Open and made her debut in the top 100. Her rise felt meteoric, but for Eala, now 20, it was the product of a lifetime of work. “The results that I’ve been getting,”she says, “have been cooking for years.”
Eala grew up in Quezon City, a suburb of Manila, in the Philippines; her grandfather encouraged Eala and her brother to play tennis to secure scholarships at American colleges. Every day after school they would train at the local country club, where the courts were first come, first served, so her grandfather would arrive hours before school let out…
