By REYNALD MAGALLON
Alex Eala cruised to a 6-3, 6-1 victory over Talia Gibson of Australia to barge into the quarterfinals of the W40 Palma del Rio International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournament on Friday, June 30 (Manila time).
The Filipina tennis princess started out strong and never let her fellow teen contender get any sort of momentum to pick up her second straight-set victory.
It was a fitting sequel to a 6-3, 6-2 triumph over hometown bet Lorena Solar Denoso in the first round.
Eala quickly set the tempo of the contest, breaking Gibson’s serve twice in the opening set for an early 3-0 lead.
The 19-year-old Gibson retaliated by securing the next two games to close the gap but that hardly bothered Eala who easily shrugged off the resistance to take the first set.
As if the opening set were not enough, Eala turned her game a notch higher in the second set and raced to a 5-0 lead – as she produced a series of deftly executed winners that had her supporters cheering in approval.
Gibson, refusing to go down without a fight, held her serve in the sixth game to get herself into the scoreboard.
Her fightback proved to be short lived as Eala produced came through with whistling shots that all but closed out the contest in one hour and 10 minutes.
Eala’s win set her up an exciting duel against third seed and veteran Valeria Savinykh of Russia.
Savinykh defeated Japan’s Naho Sato 7-5, 6-0 in the first round before surviving Venezuela’s Andrea Gamiz 6-0, 2-6, 6-4.
