DC Open’s Bet on Breakout Tennis Phenom Alex Eala Pays Off

WASHINGTON D.C. — Alex Eala defeated four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka 6-4, 6-2 in the semifinals of the Mubadala DC Open on Saturday to reach her second career tour-level final and her first at a WTA 500 event. The 21-year-old from the Philippines may be the most popular up-and-coming star in tennis and her success this week has been a huge win for the tournament.

She will take on the world’s No. 3 Jessica Pegula in the final at noon on Sunday.

Eala has drawn raucous crowds of Filipino supporters wherever she’s played over the past 12 months. At her Australian Open debut in January, hundreds, if not thousands, of fans waited in lines to get into her first round match on a small outer court, but most of them never got to see her play because the crowds were too big.

“One of the first times that I was really kind of taken aback was this year in the Australian Open,” Eala said. “Then as well the whole Middle Eastern swing was very eye-opening for me.”

DC Open chairman Mark Ein wanted to ride the Eala wave. “Earlier this year in the early spring our team said ‘this is a phenomenon that’s spreading, and we should try to get Alex to come to Washington,’” Ein said in a press conference on Tuesday. “Having her here is honestly one of the really great things that’s [happened] this year.”

Ein said more than 80% of inquiries that the tournament’s ticketing team received in the lead up to the event were asking when Eala would be playing. Those fans walked the walk when it came time to show up. Eala supporters flooded the main stadium this week during her matches waving Philippines flags, and sometimes even clapping for opponents missed serves (a tennis etiquette no-no). When she did post-match interviews at the Tennis Channel desk outdoors, they followed her there to cheer behind her.

“Sometimes I forget the impact that I hold, and sometimes I don’t expect the number of people who come and support,” Eala said. “It seems to surprise me every time.”

No woman from the Philippines has ever been ranked in the ATP or WTA top 30 prior to Eala. It is the 12th most-populous nation in the world, with approximately 118 million people, plus millions more folks of Filipino descent who live around the world.

Eala’s 1.6 million Instagram followers are far beyond what would be expected for a player with her career resume. Only seven active women’s tennis players have more followers. Six are Grand Slam champions—Serena and Venus Williams, Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Emma Raducanu and Osaka—and the seventh, Elina Svitolina, has won 20 tournaments on tour. Eala has yet to win a single WTA title. She has earned at least $10 million in sponsorships but that still hasn’t placed her in the top 10 of the sport’s highest paid players.

That could change today after what has been an unbelievable two months for Eala on the court. During the grass season she beat 2026 Australian Open winner Elena Rybakina in Berlin and then ended Swiatek’s title defense in Wimbledon—both in straight sets. In the first three rounds of the DC Open earlier this week, she knocked out former Grand Slam finalists Qinwen Zheng and Leylah Fernandez as well as the event’s No. 2 seed in Svitolina.

Eala will face a tough match against Pegula in the final but the DC Open has already won simply by her being here. The event sold out in each of the past six years, so they didn’t need Eala’s help to reach that goal, but she nonetheless attracted a new cohort of fans to the nation’s capital.

“I wish we had more tickets to sell for Alex,” Ein said. “[But] the joyful thing for all of us isn’t just creating an event that people who love tennis come to, but to bring new people into the sport.”