Tennis great Kim Clijsters has broken down Alex Eala\u2019s game and revealed how the Filipina star makes her opponents \u201cvery uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eala<\/a> soared to her career-high ranking of world No 31 after her run to the quarter-finals of the WTA 1000 event in Dubai last week.<\/p>\n The 20-year-old upset world No 8 Jasmine Paolini \u2014 her third win over a top 10 player \u2014 in the second round in Dubai, while she also defeated Hailey Baptiste and Sorana Cirstea before losing to Coco Gauff.<\/p>\n The Filipina, who had a breakout season in 2025, holds a 10-6 record in 2026 (including matches at WTA Challenger\/125 level).<\/p>\n Speaking on the latest episode of her Love All podcast, Clijsters explained what Eala does so well.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, there\u2019s a lot of things that she does really well. And I think there\u2019s a lot of things that make her opponents very uncomfortable,\u201d said the former world No 1.<\/p>\n \u201cShe has, you know, one of the things that she can\u2019t control is that she\u2019s a left-hander. There\u2019s always something about playing a left-hander, you get pulled out of the court a little bit differently with her forehand cross court.<\/p>\n Alex Eala reveals \u2018highlight of my career so far\u2019 as she continues to \u2018live out dream\u2019<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n \u2018Absolute rock star\u2019 Alex Eala named the \u2018biggest draw in women\u2019s tennis\u2019 over Sabalenka and Gauff<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cHer forehand is really good, but I think her backhand is better, her backhand is a little bit more of an aggressive shot.<\/p>\n \u201cThe combination of her aggressive baseline shots, with her backhand, and then the ability to hit a heavier spin and make your opponents step back a little bit behind the baseline, being able to make the angle with her forehand and open up the court, a lot of times to her opponent\u2019s backhand \u2014 is something that a lot of players have a really hard time dealing with.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd her footwork is really good, she has great stamina. We\u2019ve seen her, [against] Iga [Swiatek] last year, where she played a really good match. She\u2019s still very young, but we see the mental growth as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The four-time Grand Slam champion went on to describe Eala as a \u201cpit bull\u201d and compared her to former world No 4 Dominika Cibulkova.<\/p>\n \u201cShe reminds me a little bit of a\u2026 she has that kind of pitbull, [Dominika] Cibulkova was a little bit like that, to me, as well,\u201d the Belgian continued.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have such quick feet, but the ability from a defensive situation to still move into the court and become an aggressive player is a very tough combination to handle on the other side of the net.<\/p>\n \u201cSo very interesting, has done great things so far at a young age. Still has some improvements to get to, and consistency is something that\u2019s going to be very important. A lot of players know her now, know her strengths, know her weaknesses.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s something that she\u2019s going to have to deal with as well \u2014 is to make sure she can make her strengths become even stronger, but work on some of the weaknesses.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: WTA Indian Wells: How many points will Sabalenka, Swiatek, Andreeva, Mboko, Eala drop?<\/a> The post Former world No 1 reveals how Alex Eala makes opponents \u2018very uncomfortable\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tennis great Kim Clijsters has broken down Alex Eala\u2019s game and revealed how the Filipina star makes her opponents \u201cvery uncomfortable.\u201d Eala soared to her career-high ranking of world No 31 after her run to the quarter-finals of the WTA 1000 event in Dubai last week. The 20-year-old upset world No 8 Jasmine Paolini \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WTA Tour News<\/h2>\n
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