In a clash between two players looking to regain their footing on tour, Alex Eala snapped her three-match losing streak with a 6-3, 6-1 victory over Diane Parry in the first round of the Ningbo Open on Monday evening.
This was the first win for the Filipina in the Asian swing, after two losses at the hands of Tatiana Prozorova in the Singapore Open and Shi Han in the Wuhan Open.
To start the first set, the opening four service games went with serve as both players held firm to keep it level at 2-2. Eala then found her opening on return, breaking her opponent in the fifth game to take a 3-2 lead.
Momentum then shifted into a flurry of breaks, with Parry and Eala surrendering serve in the next two games as the world No. 20 maintained a narrow 4-3 advantage. However, the Filipina left-hander stemmed the tide in the eighth game, using her backhand to dictate the rallies and consolidate the break for a 5-3 lead.
Eala made the most of her third break of the set, applying pressure with her aggressive returns in the ninth game at 6-3 to close out the opener and seize the early advantage.
The Filipina’s effectiveness on return proved decisive, particularly against Parry’s first serve. Eala won 11 points on her opponent’s first-serve deliveries, nearly tripling the 24-year old’s four-point tally in the same category to underline her edge in the opening set.
Going into the second set, the run of Eala persisted to seven straight games won, including a second game break to race to a sizable 3-0 lead. The fourth game was tight and extended into a deuce, before the Filipina claimed her fifth break of the match to make it 4-0.
Parry finally got on the board by breaking Eala in the fifth game, but the reprieve was short-lived as the Filipina immediately responded with another break to restore her four-game cushion at 5-1. Eala then held her nerve on serve in the seventh game to seal the straight-sets victory and hand the Frenchwoman her fifth consecutive defeat on tour.
The world No. 20’s consistency from the baseline proved crucial to her dominant performance, as she committed just nine unforced errors throughout the match compared to Parry’s 25, allowing the Filipina to maintain control of the rallies and capitalize on her opponent’s mistakes.
Eala now awaits the winner between Yulia Putintseva and sixth seed Diana Shnaider in the round of 16.
