MANILA – Alex Eala earned twin victories in the 202 International Tennis Federation (ITF) World Tennis Tour Juniors after dominating the girls’ singles with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Czech Republic’s Nikola Bartunkova on Sunday night at the Tennis Club Milano Alberto Bonacossa, Milan, Italy.
The win serves as Eala’s revenge to Bartunkova after the latter ousted the former in the 2019 ITF World Juniors Tennis finals.
The Juniors World No. 3 ranked tennis player Eala surged to a 5-1 start on Sunday evening before settling for 6-3 due to a couple of service errors.
In the second set, the Filipina scored 3-0, but Bartunkova cut the gap to 3-5. Eala maintained her winning momentum to seal the win in the next set.
With the victory, the Filipina tennis sensation joined the growing list of Trofeo Bonfiglio girls’ singles roll of champions, which features Simona Halep, Sloane Stephens, Belinda Bencic, Dominika Cibulkova, Anna Kournikova, Gabriela Sabatini, and Virginia Wade.
Eala kicked off her singles campaign in Milan by routing Brenda Fruhvirtova of the Czech Republic in the first round, 6-1, 6-2, and Kayla Cross of Canada in the second round, 6-1, 6-1.
She went on with her rampage and prevailed over No. 13 seed Ksenia Zaytseva of Russia in the third round, 7-6(3), 4-6, 7-5; No. 6 seed Costoulas in the quarterfinals, 7-6(5), 4-6, 6-4; and Mirra Andreeva of Russia, 7-5, 6-2, in the semifinals.
On Saturday, the 16-year-old Eala and American partner Madison Sieg won the girls’ doubles championship of the tournament.
The two bested Croatia’s Lucija Ciric Bagaric and Belgium’s Sofia Costoulas, 6-4, 4-6, (13-11) in the finals of the tournament classified as a rank lower than the Grand Slams./PN
