Iga Swiatek believes she was always going to have an advantage over Alex Eala on the clay courts at the Madrid Open, although she admits she initially struggled to find her rhythm at the start of their match.<\/p>\n
Barely a month after Eala stunned five-time Grand Slam winner Swiatek<\/a> in the quarter-final of the Miami Open, they had a rematch at the WTA 1000 tournament in the Spanish capital.<\/p>\n The Pole never got going on the hard courts in the United States as she went down 2-6, 5-7 against the 19-year-old, who also beat reigning Australian Open champion Madison Keys and 2017 French Open winner Jelena Ostapenko before going down to Jessica Pegula in the semi-final.<\/p>\n Early on in Madrid it looked like Eala<\/a> would pull off another famous upset win as she broke in the opening game of the match and went on to win the first set, but Swiatek eventually settled and claimed a 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 victory.<\/p>\n The defending Madrid Open champion was always going to up her game on her favourite clay surface as she has an 88% win-loss record on the red dirt and Thursday\u2019s win took her overall tally to 91\u201312.<\/p>\n \u201cOn clay I feel like I have a little bit more advantage sometimes in the situations, where Alex could take more advantage on faster hard courts,\u201d Swiatek stated.<\/p>\n Iga Swiatek\u2019s \u2018confidence\u2019 questioned by Serena Williams\u2019 ex-coach amid form struggles<\/a><\/p>\n Who is Alex Eala\u2019s coach? Joan Bosch guiding teen star\u2019s rise to the top<\/a><\/p>\n The world No 2 added: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy to get into the rhythm and feel the right timing, so I\u2019m happy that I was just patient.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like I was making too many errors from everything, so there wasn\u2019t like one specific adjustment I had to make.<\/p>\n \u201cFor sure I wanted to keep my margins and play a little bit more safe, to just play more balls in because I was making some unforced errors that weren\u2019t really necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n With her run at the Miami Open, Eala surged into the top 80 of the WTA Rankings as she became the highest-ranked Filipina in WTA Tour history while she has already secured a direct entry into the French Open.<\/p>\n Many believe there is more to come from the teenager.<\/p>\n When asked about the hype surrounding Eala, the Pole replied: \u201cI understand that there is hype about the young players, but you gotta be focused on yourself, and honestly, I did not realise\u2026 I kind of had other things to think about.\u201d<\/p>\n Eala herself was pleased with the way she managed to compete against four-time French Open champion Swiatek, but she still has a lot to learn.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy with the match, happy with how I competed,\u201d she said. \u201cObviously up a set and a break is a good situation to be in, but you have to remember that there\u2019s another person on the other side of the court. More so, a multiple Roland Garros champion. She did well also \u2026 Things to take back and to learn.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat was different [between Madrid and Miami] was that, in my opinion, was that she executed better in the important moments, and she had a little higher level than me in specific moments of the match.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Iga Swiatek reveals edge over Alex Eala in Madrid and discusses hype around rising star<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Iga Swiatek believes she was always going to have an advantage over Alex Eala on the clay courts at the Madrid Open, although she admits she initially struggled to find her rhythm at the start of their match. Barely a month after Eala stunned five-time Grand Slam winner Swiatek in the quarter-final of the Miami […]<\/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-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","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=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WTA News<\/h3>\n