Alex Eala celebrated her birthday with some of her closest friends on the WTA Tour and the group included her first-round opponent at this year\u2019s French Open.<\/p>\n
The Filipina turned 21 on Saturday, 23 May and she shared a post on Instagram of some of her big moments as she spent time with her parents, Mike Eala and Rizza Maniego-Eala, as well as fellow tennis stars Eva Lys, Iva Jovic and Zeynep Sonmez.<\/p>\n
Eala<\/a> accompanied the post with the caption \u201c21 can you do sum for meeeeeeeeeeee\u201d and one of the slides was a video of a night out with her tennis buddies Lys, Jovic and Sonmez with all three commenting on the post.<\/p>\n During her pre-French Open press conference, the rising star was asked about the importance of friendships in tennis.<\/p>\n \u201cThese friendships I have within the tour are very important to me. I don\u2019t know how I would survive the tour without them. They are not just tennis friends; they are friends for truly life. We share many things together all along the year,\u201d she revealed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we have to play against each other, we know just to separate the professional from the friendship. There is no need to change anything in the relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n The 9 youngest women in the Roland Garros main draw, featuring two 17-year-olds<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n WTA French Open: Points being dropped by Gauff, Sabalenka, Swiatek, Rybakina, Raducanu, Eala<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n And as fate would have it, Eala and Jovic will turn rivals on Tuesday as they will be on the opposite sides of the net in the opening round of this year\u2019s French Open in what will be their first-ever WTA meeting.<\/p>\n Jovic<\/a> will be the favourite heading into the match as she is currently 17th in the WTA Rankings while Eala sits at No 37.<\/p>\n The two, of course, have been on the same side of the net in the past as they teamed up in the doubles at the Indian Wells Open in March and January\u2019s ASB Classic in Auckland.<\/p>\n In fact, Eala regularly plays doubles with her friends as she partnered with Sonmez at the Madrid Open and with Lys at Wimbledon last year.<\/p>\n The 21-year-old will make her second appearance in the main draw at Roland Garros after losing in the first round 12 months ago.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel much more prepared than last year to compete on clay,\u201d she revealed. \u201cI believe I have improved a lot on this surface over the past twelve months. I still have a lot of room for improvement, but I feel like I have evolved a bit as a player.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the preparation is geared towards arriving well at the Grand Slams, honest and honestly, right now I feel good, very, very happy, and very excited. I don\u2019t feel like I have anything to lose this week, and that allows me to play with more freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n One friend was missing from Saturday\u2019s birthday celebrations and that was Victoria Mboko as the Canadian was in action at the Strasbourg final<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Eala and Mboko will spend some time together at Roland Garros as they have signed up for the women\u2019s doubles with their first-round match also set for Tuesday against Leylah Fernandez and Diana Shnaider.<\/p>\n The post Alex Eala celebrates her birthday with rival she will face in first round at French Open<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alex Eala celebrated her birthday with some of her closest friends on the WTA Tour and the group included her first-round opponent at this year\u2019s French Open. The Filipina turned 21 on Saturday, 23 May and she shared a post on Instagram of some of her big moments as she spent time with her parents, […]<\/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-2231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231","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=2231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}French Open Features<\/h2>\n