Alex Eala's face lights up. She gestures wildly with her arms as she tells a room full of journalists (standing room only!) at the Mubadala DC Open one of her favorite stories of her summer.
It was right after her run to the round of 16 at Wimbledon, and she was in Sweden. She was standing right behind Bad Bunny. On the stage! With two of her friends! At his sold-out concert!
"It was lit!" she says, laughing.
The entire room chuckles.
"I was absolutely freaking out when he passed by me," she says.
"I was screaming the lyrics in his face," she says.
"It was like a two-second eye contact."
At that moment, on July 26 at 2:30 p.m., fans outside at the William H.G. FitzGerald Tennis Center squish up against a glass window to get a peek of her in the media room. More than a thousand have congregated two days before she even plays her first match in her first hardcourt walkup tournament to the US Open.
The 21-year-old Eala had just landed following an 18-hour flight from Manila after spending seven days moving from a meet-and-greet with sponsors, to a photoshoot, to a speaking engagement as Filipinos, from grandmas to children, cried when they got a glimpse of her. Eala-mania has gripped people from the Philippines, people from the diaspora, people who have nothing to do with the Philippines, who have never before seen tennis, and they have flooded tournaments across the globe.
Even before she finishes her Bad Bunny story, hands shoot up in the air. Mine is one of them. She takes a deep breath.
For six weeks, I get bursts of time with the player who has never won a major, has never cracked the top 10, yet has become the WTA's biggest star since Serena Williams.
I finally get the mic. "Have you ever stopped to wonder, why you?"
Sunday, July 26, 2:45 p.m.
Alex Eala brags about her wild imagination.
We're sitting in a quiet corner in the media room right after the news conference. She's "a little" jet-lagged after her long flight, but she's rallying. She's super excited to be in the capital of the United States for the first time.
She takes me back. She's 6 years old and chubby-cheeked. She's wearing ruffled socks and light-up shoes and following her older brother, Miko, to tennis courts in Manila. No player from the Philippines has ever won a singles title on the ATP or WTA tours, but as she lobs balls her mind wanders thousands of miles away. She has never left her country, but now she's playing on the green grass at Wimbledon in front of an adoring crowd. A fierce look on her face. Powerful groundstrokes. Punching her fists in the air. It makes her heart swell.
Then she goes home and stares at the poster of her "super idol," Maria Sharapova.
"I liked that she was feisty," Eala tells me. "I liked that she fought a lot. She was aggressive. I liked her sense of style, you know?"
It all started, though, as a "chore." Her grandfather, Bobby Maniego, was a visionary who fell in love with tennis while playing recreationally and decided to coach his family members, including Alex's aunts and uncles. By the time Miko and Alex were ready, he had perfected the training regimen.
Maniego believed in the 10,000-hour hypothesis: a person must dedicate 10,000 hours to become a world-class expert in their field, and decided to push Alex and Miko. Every minute counted. Run from school to the practice courts. No chitchatting. Grab a racket. Focus.
"He was a tough dude," Eala says. "Talking back was not an option."
Maniego believed that by the time Alex was old enough to make her choice, it would be too late, says Karl Santamaria, who coached Alex alongside him.
"He goes, 'I have to push them where you don't even think they could go,'" Santamaria says. "His philosophy was, we may burn them out in the process, but at least we know they are not raw material.
"Looking back now, I could see some parallelism between him and Richard Williams, Toni Nadal."
Santamaria remembers a grueling match at the National Junior final in the Philippines when Alex was 7 and playing a 10-year-old on a 100-degree summer day. Most specifically, he recalls her screaming, "Come on," from the trenches of her belly. She threw up from nerves before that match, but once she got on the court, she was locked in.
"She's different," Santamaria remembers thinking to himself.
Different, maybe. Kind, definitely. When she sat down to eat her banana and saw her opponent crying, she picked up another banana from her bag and ran over and handed it to her.
At one practice when Alex was 11, a ball hit her racket and ricocheted into her nose. She was bleeding profusely, Santamaria recalls. Her grandfather told her to wipe her nose and get back to work. She did.
She won tournaments in the Philippines. Then throughout Asia. Then she got invited to Les Petits As, a prestigious under-14 tournament in France, before she turned 13.
In the final, she played and beat future Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova in a fiery three sets. The president of the French Tennis Federation loved the level of play so much he gave both of them wild cards to that year's junior Roland Garros.
It's not hyperbole to say that match changed the trajectory of her life.
Back in the media center, Alex looks off to the side. Then she looks at me.
"I'm super grateful I was put through all of that," she says. "The routine from a young age was already so rigorous, you know?"
She gets up to leave. She has strength and conditioning and a night of recovery before the hard-court grind starts. She waves and disappears into the players' lounge.
Monday, July 27, 10 a.m.
Eala moves through her training session on one of the practice courts on a sweltering morning on the first day of play at the Mubadala DC Open. Fans, 700 of them at least, line the fence holding selfie sticks and zooming in to get a video of Eala practicing.
Four-time major champion Naomi Osaka practices, in relative anonymity, on the court next to her.
An American man shows up with two visors and begins negotiating with strangers around him. "I'll give you two visors. If you get them both autographed by Eala, I will give you one and I will keep one. How does $30 sound for the task?" He asks two Filipino women standing near the gate. When they shake their heads no, he says, "What if I up my offer to $50?" He leaves to find new targets when they wave him off.
Then, as Eala throws her towel over her shoulder and makes her way off the court, a fan screams, "Run." There's a mad dash to get from the practice court to the gate. Eala steps out and fans reach over barricades to touch her. "We love you, Alex!" "Selfie please, Alex!" The guy with the visors waves them at her but he is too far from the front.
Smiling, Eala grabs a pen and begins signing. Without warning, fans scale the barricades and run toward her from all directions. They shove phones and selfie sticks in her face. They touch her arms, shake her hands. She is still smiling, still posing and saying, "Thank you, Tita, for coming," "Thank you, Tito, for your support."
A security guard shows up behind Eala. "That's enough. We're done here," the guard screams.
Nobody moves. "Autograph, please!" Another security guard shows up and they create a shield around Eala. Together, they move fans out of her way and make a path for her to the players' lounge.
"Good luck, Alex! We're rooting for you!"
Tuesday, July 28, 2:45 p.m.
"Tranquilo," coach Joan Bosch says to Eala.
It's a hot day in D.C. and Eala, playing her first round on center court, is down a set and trailing 3-4 in the second against reigning Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen of China. Wearing a bright green dress, Eala grabs her towel and walks over to her coach's corner. I'm sitting right behind Bosch.
Bosch cups his mouth and whispers. Only she can hear what he's saying. She nods as sweat drips from her forehead.
Bosch sits back and flips his palms to face the court and makes a motion like he's pushing a table. Translation: Move forward. Take her serves early. Take time away from her.
"Punto punto," he says. Pauses.
"Vamos," he screams, punching his fists.
"Vamos," she responds, nodding her head.
Alex Eala was 13 years old when coaches from the Rafa Nadal Academy reached out to her parents. They had seen her at Les Petits As and offered her a full scholarship to train at the academy in Manacor, Spain. Her parents worried she was too young. Then the academy offered a second scholarship, to her brother Miko. They both would live and train there. Her grandfather loved the idea. His vision was coming true. With Miko there to take care of Alex, their parents agreed. Alex already was packing her bags.
"The academy saw something in her, something really good, you know?" Bosch says in English with a Spanish accent.
Somebody specific at the academy saw something good in her: Rafa Nadal's Uncle Toni. Bosch, who had previously coached men's No. 1 Carlos Moya, says Toni convinced him to exclusively coach Alex.
"She was so easy to coach," Bosch says.
She learned some Spanish and never questioned instruction.
"Tennis is such a big part of the Spanish DNA, the culture, when I saw her play tournaments after [she moved], she had a whole new enthusiasm for the sport," says Dyan Castillejo, a journalist who has covered Alex since she was 6. She embodied the "vamos spirit," Castillejo says.
Less than two years after moving to the academy, at the 2020 Australian Open, Eala won her first junior major doubles title.
In December 2020, when she returned to the Philippines after months of being forced to stay in Spain during the pandemic, Santamaria noticed how motivated she was. They started their day at dawn and while having breakfast, she'd doze off on the table. But as soon as it was go-time, she was on. The academy sent Santamaria a guide book (the coaches couldn't travel with her due to vaccine regulations). The workload was intense. Two lifting sessions a day. Two training sessions a day. She needed to get better and stronger.
In September 2022, when she was 17, she won her first junior grand slam singles title at the US Open. She grinded in the lower-level ITF tournaments. She received wild cards to some big events -- like the 2023 Miami Open and Madrid Open. Her two-handed backhand was getting stronger. Her lefty forehand, already punishing, was becoming her lethal weapon. She chased after every ball.
A small Filipino crowd began following her progress. A lot of them, Castillejo says, watched her play online through a VPN and talked about it on Facebook, the most popular social media site in the Philippines. (The Philippines consistently ranks as one of the top countries for time spent on social media at over four hours per day, according to a 2022 World Economic Forum report, and it accounts for 18% of the WTA's Facebook follower base.)
Eala was losing as often as she was winning and was ranked 140th. Then came the 2025 Miami Open.
Two weeks before the tournament, Bosch pulled aside Alex's parents, who had come to visit her at the academy.
"She's ready to do something big," he told them.
Back in D.C., sitting in front of me, Bosch looks smug. Alex has turned the match against Zheng around. She's pushing forward, standing almost a foot inside the court for Zheng's first serve, and shocking her with her consistent and fast return. Eala rallies in the second set and wins the third 6-1.
"Vamos," she screams at her coach, who punched his fists in response.
Tuesday, July 28, 4:05 p.m.
Eala beams as she stands in front of Rennae Stubbs for her on-court interview after the comeback against Zheng. Filipino fans waving flags scream, "Alex, Alex." They make her smile wider as Stubbs waits to ask her questions.
"Curious minds want to know: What is it like to be this popular everywhere around the world?" Stubbs asks.
"No, the question should be rephrased," Alex says, shaking her head and smiling. "What is it like to be Filipino?"
Fans scream louder.
I join a group that runs to the players' lounge, where glass walls enable fans to watch Eala when she's recovering or stretching. I talk to a woman, Jesusa Edic, who is wearing the Philippines flag stitched as a T-shirt. When she moved to the U.S. a decade ago she didn't know a thing about tennis. In 2022, when Eala won the junior US Open title, Edic began learning what the numbers meant, how to score points and how to win a match. Then, her daughter started watching with her.
"Alex feels like home to me," Edic says, a wistful smile on her face.
On cue, Eala walks into the players' lounge. Edic waves, but Eala doesn't see her. Edic reaches out her hands, like she's trying to get a hold of Eala as she disappears into the lounge.
I wave goodbye to Edic and make my way to the media area. I don't want to be late for my one-on-one.
A few minutes later, the WTA tells me Eala has had too many interviews today and they're declining my request. Maybe tomorrow, they say.
Tuesday, July 28, 6 p.m.
Bosch gives Eala a hug as she heads off for her interviews and then turns to me outside the players' lounge. The clouds open up and rain pours down on us as we scamper inside.
I ask him about Miami last year. What does he remember from that tournament?
He smiles and shakes his head. He felt something big was on the horizon -- he had told Eala's parents as much -- but not this big.
"I was shocked," he says.
In front of a smattering of Filipino fans, Eala beat American Katie Volynets in straight sets. The crowd grew during her second-round match against 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko. She kept rolling, taking out reigning Australian Open champion Madison Keys and the stands kept filling. She stunned former world No. 1 Iga Swiatek in the quarterfinals. When she met American Jessica Pegula in the semifinals, center court was packed. Eala lost in three sets, but Eala-mania had taken root.
"My prediction was that she was [going to play] well and she would win [against] someone good, not that she would win five matches in a Masters 1000 and three top-10s. I mean, this, no. I never said that," Bosch says, laughing.
Fans latched on and dug in even as she lost more matches than she won over her next seven tournaments. She went 1-3 combined at the French Open, Wimbledon and US Open, and finished the year losing four of her final five matches. At the 2026 Australian Open, fans climbed the bridge overlooking her court and hung the Filipino flag, but she lost in the first round. Still, every tournament became her home tournament, every court, her home court.
Toward the end of my conversation with Bosch, Eala runs into the lounge with a borrowed umbrella. The rain had canceled a slew of her media obligations. She makes herself a plate of pasta from the buffet next to the sofas and sits down across from us.
A WTA rep asks me to cut my interview short. Eala wants to talk strategy with him for her next match against defending champion Leylah Fernandez.
Shoveling pasta in her mouth, Eala grins at me and then at Bosch. I wave goodbye.
Wednesday, July 29, 4:30 p.m.
Two hours after beating Fernandez (who is half Filipina) in the second round, Eala walks into the news conference wearing a white Nike T-shirt that reads "Kapag lumago, hindi na hihinto."
I ask her what the phrase means.
She smiles. She came up with the design in collaboration with Nike, she says.
"Once it grows, it can't be stopped," she says.
It's a phrase she grew up with, she says. It's a phrase, she says, that she lives by.
Wednesday, July 29, 4:50 p.m.
Eala sits on a white leather sofa outside the players' lounge. Venus Williams, holding her 18-year-old black-and-white Havanese dog named Harry, strolls behind her.
I'm Eala's third and last one-on-one interview of the afternoon.
She is trying to stretch her hamstrings while getting settled onto the sofa. She hasn't had time for recovery yet. As soon as I hit the record button, the tournament director, Mark Ein, shows up. Eala stands up to greet him, shaking his hand.
"Beating the defending champion on center court," he says, beaming.
"It's crazy," Eala says. "I'm happy."
He raves about her popularity. About the excitement she brings.
"Thank you so much," Eala says, nodding.
"If you need anything -- anything at all -- just reach out to me directly," he says before walking away. He told reporters the day before that 80% of the calls the tournament received -- and that's a conservative estimate, he said -- were about when Eala was scheduled to play.
"Sorry," she says and turns back to me.
I tell her about the fan outside who called Eala her home.
Tears gather in her eyes.
"Homesickness must feel like a lot," she says. "I'm really glad I'm able to bring that little spark back to them."
She smiles wistfully.
"They must go through a lot as minorities in other countries," she says.
"So for them to have these experiences where they are able to rally behind someone from home representing the Philippines on a big stage -- it's just a little remembrance."
She pauses and takes a deep breath.
"That answers all the questions about, 'What do I think about my impact?'" she says.
But what about her? "You live in Spain and you travel the world. What is your relationship to home?" I ask her.
She waves her arms around her.
"Nowadays all these people coming to watch me, they are my glimpses of home," she says.
Her enthusiasm kicks in.
"It's the culture, it's the energy, it's what's familiar and what's nostalgic, right?" she says.
She gets to talk to them in Filipino. She gets to be funny with them. "Filipino humor," she says, smiling and wagging her eyebrows.
I tell her I spend so much time thinking about how different we are when we speak our mother tongue. "I'm so sarcastic in my mother tongue," I tell her. "But super earnest in English."
Her eyes bulge. She nods and smiles.
"I'm sassy and sarcastic in both languages," she says, "but when you're speaking in your native language, you can be a little more aggressive."
"Some insults in Filipino are like 'Pow,' you know?" She slams her right fist into her left palm for dramatic effect. She's cackling now.
"In English it's a slap in the face," she says. "In Filipino, it's a closed-fist punch."
She laughs for 10 straight seconds. Catching her breath, she smiles.
"Home is definitely the people."
Monday, Aug. 3, 3:21 p.m.
Alex Eala's grin is so wide it creates crinkles around the corners of her eyes and deepens her dimples. She waves at me through the Zoom camera, wearing her white Nike T-shirt with the Filipino phrase "Once it grows, it can't be stopped."
It has been 2½ hours since she won her first WTA title at the Mubadala DC Open. Two and a half hours since she threw her racket, sunk to her knees, doubled over into a fetal position, covered her face in elation, hugged her opponent, sunk back to the ground, planted her palms on the court, jumped, spun, raised her arms to the crowd, ran over to Bosch, hugged him, screamed and punched her fists in the air. Two and a half hours since the Filipino diaspora packed the court on a Monday afternoon, after rain washed out the final the previous day, waving the country's flag and screaming "Laban, Alex!" -- fight, Alex! -- first when she made a remarkable comeback against the top-seeded Pegula, from a set down to bageling the 11-time WTA champion, and then devolving into just screaming her name after she won her first WTA title.
After her celebration, she ran to her bag, picked up her phone, found her family group chat and video called her family. Through tears, she cupped her mouth with her palms while Miko and her parents cried with her.
"We were freaking out and celebrating," she tells me.
Then she listened as Pegula told the crowd that while it's not fun to play in front of people who are so feverishly rooting for Eala, she is thankful that Eala is bringing new fans to tennis.
With the poise of a star, Eala told Pegula that she is sure she'll be in many finals with her in the future. When she received the golden trophy, she turned around and -- appropriately with the flag of the Philippines in the backdrop -- posed for photos.
She has always imagined this moment, she tells me. There's euphoria. Her body is buzzing with adrenaline. She's "wrapped in a bubble of joy," she says. She's almost nervous to stop to think about it all.
"I don't know how overwhelmed I'd be with the emotions," she says.
I ask her if her ability to sound so mature in front of thousands of people is a learned trait. She says she speaks what she feels. She's lucky enough to be good at articulating her emotions, she says.
People find that moving, I tell her.
She nods and thanks me and hops off the podium. Eala has to catch a flight to Toronto. The National Bank Open awaits. Her first-round match, scheduled for Wednesday night, is sold out.
Friday, Aug. 7, 11:24 p.m.
A fan dressed as a blue dinosaur with a Filipino flag draped across its shoulders is dancing his night away in the nosebleeds in Toronto. He has been at it for almost three hours -- as long as Eala has been on the court -- first when she comfortably won the first set, then when she lost the second set while struggling with an ankle issue and then when she made a valiant comeback and won the third. He is dancing still when Eala runs over to hug her American opponent, Caty McNally, who thanks Eala for the incredible atmosphere. She means Eala-mania. She means the energy from the 10,000 fans -- many of them Filipinos -- who packed the court and buoyed Eala every time her energy or level dipped.
I'm waiting for a virtual one-on-one and getting messages from journalists and friends at the venue in Toronto. According to Canada's 2021 census, the greater Toronto area is home to more than a quarter-million Filipinos and it felt like their emotion was represented by the thousands who made it in. The tournament director for the National Bank Open made some calls and had a vendor serve chicken adobo and lumpia at the venue (verdict from Castillejo: the adobo was so-so, but the lumpia, delicious).
"The Filipinos are always searching for a savior, an icon, a patron -- that Catholic Spanish influence in us -- of an idol, someone you worship," Santamaria says. "The ordinary Filipinos, even the ones that emigrated to other countries, we've always been underdogs, we've never been noticed, and now we have someone just like [boxing legend] Manny Pacquiao."
The WTA and tournament directors have been shocked by Eala's ascension. She has become a mainstay on tournament show courts because they are the only ones big enough to contain her fans. In Toronto earlier this month, for example, the number of newly acquired buyers was 64% higher for her sessions than any other player, according to the WTA. Engagement soars after any social media post involving Eala on WTA platforms. She cracked a million followers on Instagram this March, which has now almost doubled since her DC Open win.
"There are transcendental athletes, like Caitlin Clark, that kick open the door, and all of a sudden there's a floodgate of new interest and fandom, and we are seeing that with Alex," WTA chair Valerie Camillo says.
In some ways Eala might even surpass Pacquiao's fame, both Castillejo and Santamaria say. Pacquiao fought only a few times a year. Eala plays a few times a week. There are so many more opportunities for the Filipino community to feel pride and joy and happiness.
"The sporting icons from the Philippines are so few and far between, when someone comes along, everybody just gravitates towards them," Santamaria says. "Now we have someone who's a full-blooded Filipino who was raised in the Philippines. Combine that [with] she's pretty, she talks really well, she wears her heart on her sleeves, and she loves [and celebrates] the Filipino culture, so she's the full, full, full package that you can ask for from a superstar."
Osaka said after her second-round match in Toronto that Eala's fans, while waiting for her late-night match, swarmed Osaka's court and cheered for her.
"I just felt really grateful," Osaka told reporters. "It's so cool she's building a new community and obviously her fans probably watch tennis enough now to have other favorites too, so I think it's amazing."
Back at the stadium in Toronto, Eala walks over for her interview with James Tzanoudakis, who calls the atmosphere "fever pitch." The crowd erupts. "Alex Eala, the pride of the Philippines," a fan holds up his poster. Eala, wearing custom earrings (she tells me later they were a gift from her neighbor in Manila) representing the national flower of the Philippines -- the star-shaped sampaguita -- places her hands on her mouth.
In answering a single question, "How are you doing?" she fluidly moves from thanking McNally for playing incredible tennis to asking her fans to give McNally her flowers to describing the "extreme emotions" she's felt during her seven-match winning streak the past two weeks, to how her fans motivate her. Fans listen, rapt with attention.
As I wait, past midnight for my one-on-one, the WTA informs me it's too late for her to talk to me. She is signing autographs, has a postmatch press conference and then will need to recover from that marathon match to be ready for the round of 16 against 2020 Olympic gold medalist Belinda Bencic.
Wednesday, Aug. 12, 4:30 p.m.
Eala's first news conference in Cincinnati came together before I arrived, and the WTA declined my request for a one-on-one. I want to ask about the tour's emotional toll, specifically after her loss to Bencic, so the WTA rep tells me they can record her answering my question while she's walking to the news conference.
I text her my question: The highs are so high. Tens of thousands of fans, the adoration. What do you do to bring yourself back down to earth? Do you touch grass?
I get a voice note from the WTA.
"Touch grass," Eala repeats and breaks into a giggle. "I value alone time a lot, especially when I'm exposed to these incredibly passionate crowds, so those couple moments that I get to myself really mean a lot in these weeks.
"I like to do my skincare at the end of the day. It's a whole routine for me. And I read books, and I find that when I read, I don't think about anything else.
"I've been into classics like Jane Austen. I'm reading 'Wuthering Heights' [by Emily Bronte] now."
The voice note ends.
Thursday, Aug. 13, 10:30 a.m.
I arrive at the Lindner Family Tennis Center for Eala's first practice (with Barbora Krejcikova) in Cincinnati. The seats around the practice area are filled -- this time not just with the Filipino diaspora. A British woman named Amy who splits her time between Cincinnati and London says she first saw Eala at Wimbledon earlier this year while she randomly sat down to watch her second-round match against Maya Joint. She loved Eala's fight and her dedication to her fans. Tennis is a lonely sport, but Amy thinks Eala's superpower is that she has turned tennis into a team sport. She plays with a crowd rooting for her.
I ask if she has seen the memes -- how non-Filipino fans want the Filipino community to adopt them because of how wonderful they are in their support of Eala?
Amy nods and laughs.
"It's such a fun community," she says. "I'm just so happy to be a part of it."
Friday, Aug. 14, 10 a.m.
Eala punches her right fist into her upper thighs, scrunches up her face. She has missed a slew of first serves. Bosch, standing next to her on the baseline, yells directions. The serve is Eala's biggest liability. Her average serve speed is 87.5 mph, which ranks 188th on tour, according to tennisstats.com. She ranks 173rd in aces per match. Her second serve, which averages 74 mph compared to a tour average of 86 mph according to Hawk-Eye, puts her in a bind at the start of the point. Stubbs told me last week that Eala can't win a Grand Slam with her serve. The only reason Eala gets away with it is because her lefty delivery comes in at an awkward angle for righties.
Eala never honed the throwing motion growing up and the toss doesn't come naturally. Later, she spent days, weeks, months tossing a miniature American football around at the Rafa Nadal Academy and back home in Manila. Many observers project her serve will evolve like Nadal's, who at first struggled with the toss and with generating power. Eala is aware of the chatter. Last time she practiced with Nadal -- months ago at the academy -- she asked him for tips. He gave her a bunch, but she's not going to share them with me. She has been watching a lot of Aryna Sabalenka and Roger Federer. Her team is taking bits and pieces from some of the best. It has improved in the past two months, she assures me after practice.
"We have a plan for the serve, it's always evolving," she says to me later. "I'm far from the finish line."
Friday, Aug. 14, 4:06 p.m.
Wearing a black jacket and black leggings, her straight black hair framing her face, Eala plonks herself on the sofa. We're in the empty lobby of the hotel she's staying at for the Cincinnati Open. I catch her in one of those rare instances where she's not being mobbed. She is usually in a rush to get to as many questions as possible, but now, she's listening to my questions, pausing before answering.
It's her parents' anniversary today and she's telling me about the surprise she has planned for them. She wants to take them to a nearby IMAX to see "The Odyssey." They were supposed to go today, but her brother, Miko, isn't arriving until tomorrow and she wants to go as a family. So now she'll have to find a pocket between her matches, the news conferences, the fanfare, the autographs, the mobbing.
Has all the attention changed her? I ask.
She recently had a conversation about the term "loud minority" with a friend, she begins. She sits back.
She was scrolling Instagram, she says. She came across a bunch of comments on a post about her. Five positive comments before the first negative one. Her eyes lingered on that one. Something about her serve sucking. And then she continued scrolling. A bunch more positive comments. But her eyes swam back to the negative one. Loud despite being in the minority. She stewed on it for several minutes. Then she snapped out of it.
"I was like, 'Alex, what are you doing?'" she says, shaking her head.
She says she's self-aware.
"I am able to analyze situations well. Why did this happen? Why am I feeling this way?" she says.
Still, she's just 21, she reminds me. She's still finding herself.
"But, in such a public space, with all the eyeballs," I remind her.
"That's where the self-awareness kicks in. I want to be the best version of me, because I represent so much and there's a lot of people [who] look to me."
She nods.
"You just have to be," she says.
Where does she get her wisdom from? I ask.
She lets out a roaring laugh.
"My brain?" she says, grinning.
How much would it affect her if Eala-mania fades away? I ask.
"It's bound to," she says. "It's not always going to be this intense."
She looks unfazed by the thought.
It's reaching its peak during this U.S. hard-court season, she says. The US Open might be the "craziest," it has ever been. (Queens is not just home to the US Open but also to "Little Manila," with the biggest Filipino diaspora on the East Coast.)
She loves the energy, she loves the crowd, she loves the fandom.
"But I'm doing it for the love of tennis," she says.
She pauses to ponder her own words.
"It sounds bad when I say it like that," she says.
She gives the D.C. final as an example. Rained out Sunday. A 24-hour wait.
"I was like, 'Put me in one of those indoor courts with two chairs for my coach,'" she says. "I would do it just to get the game done."
She is silent now.
I remember something she said to me the first time I met her. It was before I saw the D.C. fans mob her, it was before I witnessed her fighting spirit, it was before I heard her give the poised championship speech, it was before I felt her evoke the feeling of home in her fans, it was before I learned of the chef the Toronto tournament hired to make chicken adobo to satisfy her fans.
Why you?
"I know that a lot of these people who come to see me, whether they're Filipino or from wherever in the world, they see a part of themselves in me," she said. "I do my best for my team and for my family, but also for everybody who supports me."
In my final minutes with her, I ask her one more.
"Do you believe you're ready to win a Grand Slam?"
"Yes," she says without pausing.
"At this year's US Open?" I push.
She smiles and wags her eyebrows.
"I have my chances."