ALEX Eala blanked home bet Alana Smith, 6-0, 6-0, and rolled into the main draw of the W80 Rancho Santa Fe in California yesterday.
The Filipina tennis sensation picked up where she left off after a similar sweep in the first round of the qualifiers as she needed only 54 minutes to eliminate her American counterpart en route to the main competition.
She previously clobbered Latvia’s Deniza Marcinkeva with a 6-1, 6-3 win.
Coming off a historic US Open junior championship in New York last month, Ms. Eala will face another United States’ bet in Dalayna Hewitt in the first round of her first $80,000 tournament.
Ms. Eala is the slight favorite as the No. 281 player in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) ranking compared to No. 401 Ms. Hewitt.
The 17-year-old ace is hoping to capture her third professional title here after ruling the 2021 W25 Manacor in Spain and the W25 Chiang Rai in Thailand.
It’s her second pro tourney since the US Open conquest as she had a second-round finish in the W60 Templeton also in California last week. — John Bryan Ulanday