Alex Eala is now officially the highest-ranked Southeast Asian woman in singles in WTA Tour history.
The latest official WTA rankings, released today, August 24, place the Filipina tennis ace at No. 18 in the world.
Practically everything Eala has accomplished in singles has been unprecedented in Philippine tennis history.
In the Open Era, the best female players to emerge from the Philippines before Eala’s ascent were Maricris Fernandez-Gentz, who reached a career-high ranking of No. 284; Francesca La’O, who peaked at No. 386 in 1994; and Filipina-German Katharina Lehnert, who climbed as high as No. 389 in 2013.
The highest-ranked male players in the Open Era are Felix Barrientos, who reached No. 180 in 1991, and Eddie Cruz, who peaked at No. 197 in 1979.
Longtime Philippine team stalwart Cecil Mamiit boasts a career-best ranking of No. 72 in the world, but he achieved that mark in 1999 while still representing the United States. By the time he began representing the Philippines in 2005, he was already ranked outside the world’s top 200.
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Eala is also the first Filipino to win a singles title on the main tour of the professional circuit. She achieved the feat earlier this month by defeating world No. 3 Jessica Pegula of the United States in the final of the WTA 500 Washington Open.
She is the second Filipino to lift a championship trophy at the Washington Open, after Treat Huey won the men’s doubles title in 2012.
Huey is also tied with Eala as the highest-ranked Filipino in professional tennis history. He reached No. 18 in the men’s doubles rankings in 2016 after making the semifinals of Wimbledon.
Eala has now surpassed Southeast Asian legends Yayuk Basuki of Indonesia and Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand, who both climbed as high as No. 19 in the WTA singles rankings.
Basuki won her first WTA title in 1991 at age 20. She played her last Grand Slam in 2000 and finished her career with six WTA singles titles.
Tanasugarn captured the first of her four WTA singles titles in 2003 at age 26.
The 21-year-old Eala has now gone one better than the two Southeast Asian trailblazers. She is the first Southeast Asian to win a WTA 500 title.
All of Basuki’s and Tanasugarn’s WTA titles came in Tier III and Tier IV events, which are the equivalent of today’s WTA 250 tournaments.
Indonesia’s Janice Tjen is the only other Southeast Asian to win a title on the main tour in recent years, having emerged as champion of the WTA 250 Chennai Open last year.
Eala’s next possible target is to surpass Paradorn Srichaphan. The Thai great remains the highest-ranked Southeast Asian player in the Open Era, breaking into the ATP men’s singles top 10 at No. 9 in 2003.
