Alex Eala and Indonesian partner Priska Madelyn Nugroho proved their championship pedigree with a quick work of Japan’s Erika Matsuda and USA’s Valencia Xu, 6-0, 6-0, at the first round of the 2021 Wimbledon Championships, Wednesday evening (Manila time) at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in London.
The 2019 Australian Open champions needed just 32 minutes to book their place into the next round of their respective debuts in the Championships.
This after the match was pushed to 24 hours from the scheduled start the previous day due to inclement weather.
Eala pulled off her biggest serve of the final game to force an error on the return to take the game, the set, and the match.
The Southeast Asians were so dominant that they have allowed their opponents to just 12 points throughout the match while scoring 47 of their own.
Eala and Nugroho took advantage of the shaky serve of Xu in to go up three breaks at 5-0, and Nugroho took over from the service line to close out the first set.
The Indonesian fired two aces in the opening set’s last game, and only an error on a return gave Xu and Matsuda a point for the said game.
Eala and Nugroho will take on the winner of the match between Switzerland’s Chelsea Fontenel and USA’s Ashlyn Krueger, and France’s Oceane Babel and Belarus’ Evialina Laskevich in the second round.
