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The Philippine Women’s Open has been a huge success, but Alex Eala believes much work still needs to be done for the sport.
With tickets sold out well in advance and players heaping praises on the way the tournament has been run, it’s safe to say that the Philippine Women’s Open, the first-ever WTA 125 tournament in the Philippines, has exceeded all expectations.
For hometown icon Alex Eala, it would also be nice if this event jumpstarts the sport locally.
“I think this is a good stepping stone, like I mentioned before,” said Eala, a few hours after who lost to Camila Osorio in the quarterfinals. “In my opinion, women’s tennis has been overlooked for a long time.”
Eala is now the recognizable Filipino tennis player of all time, but this is only her first professional tournament on home soil. Local players aspiring to follow in her footsteps, both male and female, hardly get any chances to compete due to lack of tournaments. It’s a situation that merits immediate attention, according to Alex.
“On top of tennis already not being such a popular sport here in the Philippines, I heard the other day that locally there were only, for men, eight professional tournaments around the Philippines and for women only two. So to have a WTA here, like I said, is a great stepping stone and I think a wakeup call for the people who are able to help and able to do something about it.”
Veteran men’s player Niño Alcantara recently touched on this topic during an exclusive interview with The GAME in December. If he had his way, Alcantara would have preferred that the money spent for hosting the PWO had been spent on six minor tournaments to give more players a chance to play and earn points.
Alcantara was actually the first Filipino to win a tennis juniors grand slam, having won the Australian Open boys’ doubles title in 2009. Alex Eala was the second, 11 years later in 2020 when she pocketed the girls’ doubles crown of the same tournament. The 11-year gap, Alcantara said in December, was but a symptom of the ills plaguing the sport locally.
“It was hard for Philippine tennis, for sure, because one, we don’t have the facilities, and second, there’s only a few people that help the sport in the Philippines, and that’s the Philippine Tennis Association. And we don’t have tournaments at home as well. We don’t have much.”
Eala is pretty much echoing her fellow Asian Games mixed doubles bronze medalist, and hopefully for Philippine tennis the powers that be heed their call.
“I think there’s a lot of room for improvement having just two professional tournaments for women tennis players,” Eala said. “I think there’s a huge margin for improvement there. Filipinos are super hardworking, super passionate so I’m sure if we nourish our tennis players then slowly we can start to build more and more champions.”
Images from PHILTA/Philippine Women’s Open