Alexandra Eala, who has been guided by under French coach Adrien Alexis Vaseux of the Rafa Nadal Academy, will be playing in more professional tournaments in the next two months following her historic girls’ singles win in the 2022 US Open Junior Tennis Championships.
The 17-year-old Eala said this after she was done with an upset of no. 2 seed Lucie Havlickova of the Czech Republic, 6-2, 6-4, in their final showdown last Sunday.
“I could be flexible. But now, I will just focus on my professional career after playing my first junior this year,” said Eala after the match.
Eala said that playing with a lot of focus and tons of lessons learned fired her up before a packed, emotional and loud Filipino audience that cheered her for 68 minutes at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York City.
The composure that she had during the match was something that she had been developing since she stepped into the Rafa Nadal Academy with his brother Michael back in 2018.
“That’s one of things I needed to develop and learn, because that’s part of mental strength. Not allowing yourself to think of winning, that you can win. I just tried to focus on every single point. And visualize what I was going to do and focus on. I think I was able to execute that well,” added Eala.
And RNA women’s head coach Gabriel Urpi Ribas has been working on with Eala’s game over the last four years, with head coach Toni Nadal supervising their scholars.
Ribas is known for having coached Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in 1994 and 1995, during which time she won two Grand Slam tournaments. He also coached Conchita Martínez to the 1998 Australian Open final.
In 2017, he worked as a coach of Elina Svitolina and Caroline Garcia.
Now, it’s Vaseux’s turn to improve on the character and composure of Eala’s game and he has been one of the two big influences in the way Eala plays.
Vaseux has spent more time training Eala this time and has been talking about how open-minded the Filipina is about being coached.
The 33-year-old Vaseux believes that the experience she has gained with pro tournaments “has been helping her so much.”
During her finals match on Sunday, Eala was the steadier and more powerful player in dealing with Havlickova, the 2022 Roland Garros girls’ champion.
Eala dominated the first set and then won the crucial points in the second set.
Both Eala and Havlickova fought it off in the second set and broke each other’s serves before she went up at 5-4.
Eala took the final game point and the set with a follow up return shot from the baseline, which Havlickova netted.
In the end, Eala scored on 27of 34 first serves, while Havlickova made 17 of 39.