Alex Eala\u2019s brilliant form over the summer months has been rewarded with her very first WTA title at the Washington Open.<\/p>\n
The Filipina star has been quite brilliant since the grass court season, where she won the Birmingham Open, reached the semi finals of the Berlin Open, and defeated Iga Swiatek en route to the fourth round of Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
She continued that blistering form at the Washington Open, where she beat the likes of Jessica Pegula, Naomi Osaka, and Elina Svitolina to win the title.<\/p>\n
Eala has made a name for herself by become somewhat of a giant killer on the WTA Tour, and Andy Roddick thinks he knows why.<\/p>\n
Roddick believes Eala\u2019s unorthodox style of play has become a real struggle for some of the best players on the WTA Tour.<\/p>\n
Top ATP coach reveals the first thing players should do against Washington champion Alex Eala<\/a><\/p>\n Rafael Nadal sends message to Alex Eala after Washington Open victory<\/a><\/p>\n Speaking on Served<\/a>, the American said: \u201cShe makes them uncomfortable. They have to be annoyed because they never get the same shot at the same speed and the same spot. She is very good at switching directions.<\/p>\n \u201cAll they want to do is step up, especially against someone who they feel they might have more power than and doesn\u2019t serve big, but she is so good at redirecting off of pace. She has a real talent for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Eala<\/a> has picked up victories against the likes of Elena Rybakina<\/a>, Iga Swiatek<\/a>, Svitolina<\/a>, Pegula<\/a>, Osaka<\/a>, and Leylah Fernandez<\/a> over the last few months, and Roddick<\/a> is expecting her to kick on even further.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s her first title,\u201d he added. \u201cI think a lot of the conversation rightly or wrongly after Miami last year was whether it was a fun story or is this going to be a fun story for a lot longer. It\u2019s the latter.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of times when someone goes and wins something from a low ranking or has a big result, you go 12 months later once that result falls off, what\u2019s the ranking going to be. That\u2019s the true litmus test. It\u2019s not this overinflated one massive result thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Roddick believes Eala has all the tools to be one of the best players on the WTA Tour<\/a> and she has proved that with her recent form, particularly at the Washington Open.<\/p>\n \u201cEala is the real deal. She is not scared to play the big players,\u201d said Roddick. \u201cAnd right back off of a good Wimbledon result, straight back into it. I thought she was fantastic.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t even think it\u2019s a one time thing where you are surprised. She is now entering the phase where you are not judging a singular performance where you are saying that\u2019s exciting because that\u2019s the ceiling.<\/p>\n \u201cShe is now in the consistency game where you are expecting her to be pretty good all the time. It\u2019s now, can you do it every week? That\u2019s when you start talking about a top 10 player. Fourth round Wimbledon<\/a>, win Washington, quarter finals in Canada, round of 16 here, quarter-finals here, semi-finals.<\/p>\n \u201cThen you are in the conversation as a consistent contender and it\u2019s not they are dangerous on a hard court and the next three months is a write off, she is entering this conversation where she is pretty good all the time.<\/p>\n \u201cHer winning a title is not surprising to anyone, it\u2019s now almost surprising she hasn\u2019t won one because her quality has been so good so often. She is just not scared to go against the top players.<\/p>\n \u201cFor some reason what she does with switching directions and accepting pace and pinning people in corners, she is a name nobody wants to see early in a draw as a top player.\u201d<\/p>\n Eala next heads to the Canadian Open, where she is looking for her first-ever main draw victory. She will play Alycia Parks<\/a> in the second round of the Masters event, after receiving a first round bye thanks to her ranking.<\/p>\n The post Andy Roddick explains what Alex Eala does on court which makes players \u2018uncomfortable\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alex Eala\u2019s brilliant form over the summer months has been rewarded with her very first WTA title at the Washington Open. The Filipina star has been quite brilliant since the grass court season, where she won the Birmingham Open, reached the semi finals of the Berlin Open, and defeated Iga Swiatek en route to the […]<\/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-2588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588","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=2588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Alex Eala\u2019s victories over top 10 players<\/h2>\n
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