Kim Clijsters believes there have been precedents that stand Alex Eala in good stead to win a maiden Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old has been a breath of fresh air for the WTA Tour<\/a> as the left-hander climbs up the rankings, as an army of diehard fans back her to the hilt.<\/p>\n After a steady rise since turning professional in 2020, Eala<\/a> has exploded into life, particularly in 2026, with an impressive fourth-round Wimbledon<\/a> run and a first WTA Tour title triumph in Washington.<\/p>\n The Filipina is now 20th in the world, despite many questioning if her serve is good enough to challenge the game\u2019s elite.<\/p>\n Serena Williams\u2019 coach, Rennae Stubbs, initially doubted whether Eala could win a major with her serve<\/a>, which is well outside the top 50 in terms of effectiveness. The Australian then somewhat rode back on those comments after her win in the American capital.<\/p>\n WTA Rankings Race To Indian Wells: Alex Eala 15th as Aryna Sabalenka holds 1-point lead at top<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Alex Eala now sits above the WTA Tour\u2019s very best in one key area<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as\u00a0<\/span>a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n The topic about her serve still rages on, with some saying that her lefty delivery makes it harder to return than you would expect, while acknowledging that Eala can improve both the first and second serve for the 2027 campaign.<\/p>\n Now, four-time major winner Clijsters has come out and said both Eala and Washington finalist Jessica Pegula<\/a>, 32, can win a Grand Slam thanks to their strong ground and return game, despite not being big servers.<\/p>\n The former world No 1 said on the latest episode of Love All<\/a>, \u201cI do think they have a chance. Winning a Grand Slam is hard no matter what, whether you have a great first or second serve.<\/p>\n \u201cBut Eala and Jessie [Pegula] have such strong weapons when it comes to the return game and because of it they can break an opponent\u2019s serve down.<\/p>\n \u201cJust by being so good and aggressive on the return. And we saw with [Aryna] Sabalenka and [Ekaterina] Alexandrova\u2026 those players have bad service games and days too. If you have Sabalenka winning 33% of first service points, of course Eala and Pegula can win a slam if that happens in the final.\u201d<\/p>\n Clijsters<\/a> continued by saying that you need a bit of \u201cluck\u201d to win a slam and she had played majors where she could have lost earlier in the tournament, before lifting the trophy at the end of it.<\/p>\n The Belgian also said that the likes of Anastasia Myskina, who had a slow serve, and Ana Ivanovic, who had a ball toss that was \u201cout of control\u201d at times, didn\u2019t have great deliveries but still won the French Open in 2004 and 2008, respectively.<\/p>\n Moreover, Angelique Kerber didn\u2019t have the most powerful serve but the left-hander still won three Grand Slams and topped the rankings, too. Clijsters did say that former US Open finalist and world No 3 Pegula is closer to winning a major in 2026 than Eala, though.<\/p>\n She added, \u201cI definitely think someone like an Eala\u2026because of the mindset\u2026 Jessie too. She is so strong mentally, the way they are able to move side to side, the groundstrokes that they have. I definitely think they can win [a slam].<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe Eala not as much yet as a Pegula but I think Jessie believes she can win a Grand Slam. I think that is where it starts most of all, you have to believe you can beat every player out there.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether you haven\u2019t done it in a Grand Slam yet or you\u2019ve done it in the smaller tournaments. To beat the top players, the [Elena] Rybakina\u2019s and the Sabalenka\u2019s, that\u2019s super important because every match you play is different.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: WTA Cincinnati Open draw 2026: Alex Eala faces tough path: Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Gauff could meet<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Kim Clijsters picks WTA star more likely than Alex Eala to win first Grand Slam<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kim Clijsters believes there have been precedents that stand Alex Eala in good stead to win a maiden Grand Slam. The 21-year-old has been a breath of fresh air for the WTA Tour as the left-hander climbs up the rankings, as an army of diehard fans back her to the hilt. After a steady rise […]<\/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-2622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622","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=2622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WTA Tour News<\/h2>\n