Naomi Osaka is about to get her first experience of the Alex Eala buzz that has taken over tennis as she will face the Filipina in the semi-final of the Washington DC Open.<\/p>\n
Rising star Eala<\/a> and her army of Filipino fans are the talk of the tennis world as the 21-year-old is delivering on court while her supporters are adding a party-like atmosphere to all her matches.<\/p>\n The Washington DC Open is the latest tournament on the WTA Tour to experience the Eala effect with ticket<\/a> sales increasing following her addition to the line-up.<\/p>\n And Eala has backed up her status as one of the most exciting players on the tour as she has reached the last four of the Mubadala DC Open with a stunning two-set win over third seed Elina Svitolina<\/a>.<\/p>\n Up next is four-time Grand Slam winner Osaka in what will be their first career meeting and the former world No 1 is excited.<\/p>\n Why Alex Eala\u2019s star status could be about to go to the next level<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Andy Roddick gives honest verdict on Alex Eala rejecting the chance to play doubles with Venus Williams<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never played Alex before, but obviously I\u2019ve seen some of her matches,\u201d she said. \u201cShe\u2019s had an incredible year so far. Honestly, playing her would be really fun for me, just to get that knowledge about how she is.\u201d<\/p>\n The Japanese star added: \u201cI remember watching one of her matches last year at the US Open, and it was kind of mind-blowing. I didn\u2019t think tennis could have an atmosphere like that. It almost felt more like a basketball game.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve kind of routinely wanted to check in on her \u2014 not personally \u2014 but just to keep following her story and see how she\u2019s growing.\u201d<\/p>\n It is hard to believe that Eala only really made her breakthrough in March last year when she reached the semi-final of the Miami Open before going on to make her Grand Slam debut at the French Open.<\/p>\n Later in the year, she became the first Filipina to win a Grand Slam main draw singles match with her success at the US Open and eventually broke into the top 50 of the WTA Rankings.<\/p>\n Now she sits at No 25 in the Live Rankings and could move up further if she gets past Osaka, but the 21-year-old is not counting her chickens.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m super excited. I hope it lives up to the expectations,\u201d the Filipina said. \u201cI\u2019m definitely going to do everything I can and leave it all on court, like always. Of course, Naomi is an amazing player, so it\u2019s going to be a tough match for me.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Alex Eala v Naomi Osaka: Former No 1 excited about basketball-like atmosphere from Filipina\u2019s fans<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Naomi Osaka is about to get her first experience of the Alex Eala buzz that has taken over tennis as she will face the Filipina in the semi-final of the Washington DC Open. Rising star Eala and her army of Filipino fans are the talk of the tennis world as the 21-year-old is delivering on […]<\/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-2572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572","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=2572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Alex Eala News<\/h2>\n