Eala, Tjen usher in new wave of SEA talent

‘I know I can do well on clay’

The 20-year-old lefty, whose game lends itself more to hard courts, is playing her first full clay season at tour-level and is admittedly still adapting to the surface.

She tallied up four wins and four losses through tournaments in Linz, Stuttgart, Madrid and Rome, and is now ready to make her second main draw appearance at Roland-Garros.

“Of course I’m starting to build that relationship (with clay), especially at this level,” she said in the Italian capital, where she eventually fell to the No.2 seed and former champion Elena Rybakina in the round of 32.

“I competed on clay definitely many times growing up. But playing as a professional obviously is a different game. This is my first season where I’ve really done these high-level tournaments.”

“I’m finding my footing and I know that I can do well. I’m a much better player physically and mentally than I was last year and we’ve really been working hard, my team and I. And hopefully the things we’ve been working on will reflect more on my game.”

Eala’s rise over the past 14 months has been quite impressive. A former US Open junior champion, the Filipina sensation had her breakout moment in Miami last year, where she stormed to the semi-finals, as a wildcard ranked 140 in the world, knocking out three Grand Slam champions along the way, including Iga Swiatek.

She made her first WTA final three months later, on grass in Eastbourne – winning six matches in a row through qualifying and main draw – and clinched a WTA 125-level title in Guadalajara in September.

Eala went into the offseason eager to work and had a dream opportunity to have a practice session with Rafael Nadal himself, who chose the young Filipina to be on the other side of the net in his first hit since his retirement a year earlier.

“It was crazy,” Eala told The National of that special time with the 22-time Grand Slam champion.

“It was my first time ever hitting with him and I was so nervous and it was definitely physically demanding for me. I mean he was off court for like a year and I've been training strong and I feel like, man I was so far.

“But it was just such a great experience to really absorb all that knowledge. Just to say that you hit with Rafa, it's insane, but I feel so lucky and so blessed.”

While Eala has had numerous encounters with Nadal over the years at the academy, where she has been training since she was 13 years old, she insists the fact that she gets to talk to him and receive advice from him remains a surreal experience.

“He's very down-to-earth when you talk to him, of course. And he asks questions and things like that. But it's just, he's Rafa. So you're always just going to be scared. Like, I'm always still scared. I don't know what to say. I always get very tongue-tied,” Eala recently told Andy Roddick on his podcast Served.

Making an impact

Eala kicked off her 2026 campaign with a run to the semi-finals at the WTA event in Auckland, which earned her a spot in the top 50 for the first time – an unprecedented feat by a player from the Philippines.

The weeks that followed were eye-opening for Eala, who had already been in the public eye back home ever since her junior success in New York in 2022, but was now getting an enormous amount of fanfare from Filipino fans everywhere she went.

In Melbourne, Manila, Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Dubai, Eala competed in front of capacity crowds, with fan queues wrapping around stadiums hours ahead of her matches.

“I think that this year, 2026, the start of the season is when I seriously noticed that it was coming, the people were really coming, they were buying tickets, they were taking time out of their day. It was like, wow,” she reflected on Served.

“My match in Melbourne, I was at a loss for words when I saw the videos after my match. I saw a couple of clips of the lines and the people and I was really surprised. It’s hard to… I think also a little in denial. It’s hard to accept or really see yourself being someone with that much influence or that much impact because I’ve been myself my whole life. Nothing changed much, in terms of who I am, from 2025 to 2026. It’s just that my success kind of skyrocketed, which I’m very thankful for.

“So after I broke that barrier of not accepting, like thinking, ‘I don’t think I’m really famous’, every week they just kept coming, so I was like, ‘Okay, you have to accept it, absorb it, it’s here, it’s a really good position’, and I started to just be so grateful.

“Because I don’t know how long this is going to last either. It’s definitely not going to be forever, so I try to enjoy it as much as I can while it’s happening.”

The level of fandom around Eala has been undeniable, so much so that even her peers are in awe of the atmosphere she’s been able to create during her matches.

Amanda Anisimova sat in the stands for one of Eala’s matches in Dubai, just to witness it all firsthand.

“I love that she has such an incredible fan base. I've seen the atmosphere. It's amazing,” Anisimova said.

“I think she's also such a good representation of her country. I mean, she's so young and she carries herself so well. It's so good to see.

“I caught a little bit of the beginning of her match last night. Yeah, I stuck around for it because the atmosphere was so great.”

SEAsters unite

Eala’s rise has coincided with that of another talent emerging from Southeast Asia, Indonesia’s Janice Tjen, who will be making her Roland-Garros debut in a few days.

Tjen was ranked 372 in the world 12 months ago and hit a career-high 36 in the world last February.

She is the first Indonesian woman since Yayuk Basuki in 1998 to be ranked in the top 50 and was also one of the players to receive unexpected huge crowds during her matches in Melbourne earlier this year.

When Tjen and Eala teamed up for doubles in Abu Dhabi, fans quickly gave them the nickname ‘SEAsters’ (Southeast Asian sisters), and it marked a special occasion as the region got to be represented by two players in the top 50 at the same time.

Unlike Eala, who has some experience playing on clay, Tjen, who took the college tennis route in the United States and was a standout at Pepperdine University, played her first-ever tour-level matches on the surface last month.

With a game inspired by former world No.1 and 2019 Roland-Garros champion Ash Barty, Tjen has the potential to be a force on clay in the future, but the 24-year-old is still finding her footing on the red dirt.

“I know a lot of people have come up and said to me like, ‘Oh, you're going to be tough on clay. Like your game is going to be pretty tough to play against’. But obviously I haven't spent that much time on clay. And like even growing up, I didn't get to play on clay that much,” she told rolandgarros.com earlier this year.

“So I'm just taking things one at a time.”

Tjen played singles and doubles in Charleston, Madrid and Rome, looking to get more matches on clay and given how quickly she’s been adjusting to her new status among the world’s best players, she’ll likely figure out the surface faster than expected.

Either way, the rise of Southeast Asian tennis is a great source of pride for the players, with more coming up, like Thailand’s Lanlana Tararudee, who broke the top 100 this month, and her compatriot Mananchaya Sawangkaew, who achieved that feat a year ago.

“I'm super, super proud to be part of this group. And these are girls that I grew up with. I see them a lot in tournaments that we have in common, regional ones,” said Eala in Madrid.

“So, to see all of us grow in that aspect as players and as people, I think it's a really good thing for our region and super inspiring to hear.

“I think Southeast Asia has its own little charm. We have certain humour that's very similar, maybe cultural things that we share. There's definitely that shared sense of pride for my region.”