ALEX EALA, AMERICAN PARTNER CLINCHES MILAN TOURNEY DOUBLES CROWN
Tournament top seeds Alex Eala of the Philippines and Madison Sieg of the United States copped the girls’ doubles crown of the JA Milan tournament 61° Trofeo Bonfiglio in Milan, Italy.
No. 1 seeds Eala, 16, and Sieg, 18, outlasted Sofia Costoulas of Belgium and Lucija Ciric Bagaric of Croatia, 6-4, 4-6, 13-11, Saturday in Italy.
En route to the finals, the top-seeded duo led the first set at 3-0.
However, the Eala-Sieg tandem was pushed to the hilt by Bagaric and Costoulas in the second set, tying it at 4-4, before taking the next games to force a tiebreaker.
But the Filipina-American duo kept their composure and held on to win two consecutive games.
At the decider match, Eala and Sieg successfully turned the games around, tying at 5-5, then 6-6, and then pulling away at 7-6, to steal the lead for the first time in the final set.
The back-and-forth thriller continued as the duo tied it up at 11-11, before Eala and Sieg first reached 12-11, and then capped it off at 13-11.
The duo needed one hour and 35 minutes to beat the Croatia-Belgium tandem before securing the title.
The Filipino tennis prodigy is still in running in the singles title match on Sunday, Manila time, against 19th-seeded Nikola Bartunkova of the Czech Republic.
This is Eala’s third JA title, her fifth counting the two Grand Slams.
Filipina Tennis star won the 2021 Roland Garros girls’ doubles championship with Oksana Selekhmeteva of Russia and the 2020 Australian Open girls’ doubles crown with Priska Madelyn Nugroho of Indonesia.
In 2019, No. 3 Eala dominated the JA Plantation girls’ double title with Evialina Laskevich of Belarus. She also claimed her first girls’ doubles championship at the I Trofeo David Ferrer tournament with Joelle Lilly Sophie Steur of Germany in 2018.