Alex Eala’s return to the WTA Tour lasted a single match. The 21-year-old from the Philippines lost 6-4, 3-6, 3-6 to Chinese qualifier Shi Han in the first round of the Wuhan Open on Monday night, 12 October.
Eala won the opening set on Dongfeng-Voyah Center Court and led 3-2 in the second, putting her within reach of the round of 32. The match then swung sharply. Shi took seven games in a row to go 3-0 up in the deciding set, and although Eala managed to avoid a second break of serve, Shi held to love with back-to-back aces for a 5-2 lead and closed out the win soon after. Shi had needed to come through qualifying just to reach the main draw, and she showed no sign of nerves in the closing stages.
Serving was the main problem for Eala, who had trouble landing her first delivery throughout the night. She finished with 37 unforced errors, while Shi struck 20 winners. The Inquirer said Eala had “shot herself in the foot” against a determined opponent. Shi is ranked 217th and had never beaten a top-100 player before she arrived in Wuhan. She reached the main draw by knocking out world No. 37 Peyton Stearns and world No. 69 Kamilla Rakhimova in qualifying, and her win over Eala was the first of her career against a top-20 player.
The tournament is the last WTA 1000 event of the season, which raised the stakes for Eala. Defeats at this level carry a cost in ranking points. She had skipped the China Open to play for the Philippines at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, so Wuhan was her first Tour match since that national duty in Japan, where she represented her country rather than chasing ranking points. It was also her second loss in a row to an opponent with a far lower profile. At the Singapore Open late last month, she went out in the round of 16 to Tatiana Prozorova, an unseeded Russian.
Shi now moves on to the second round, where she will face Canada’s Leylah Fernandez, who recently won the Singapore Open title. The Hubei event has already given the qualifier the best week of her career so far. For Eala, ranked inside the world’s top 20, the result means two early exits in her last two Tour events heading into the final stretch of the season.
