Alex Eala’s Asian Games gold-medal dream began Thursday like a script written for a Filipino tennis fairy tale. It ended instead with a familiar piece of hardware.
The 21-year-old Filipina stormed to a 5-0 lead against China’s Wang Xiyu, three games away from a first-set bagel and seemingly another set away from another big Asiad moment.
Wang, however, declined the role of victim.
The World No. 85 clawed back to 3-5 before Eala closed out the set, 6-3. But those three games were enough to give the Chinese player something more valuable than scoreboard consolation: momentum.
And she used it.
Wang repeatedly broke Eala in the second set, racing to a 5-1 lead. Eala, whose résumé already includes improbable comebacks on the WTA Tour, briefly threatened another escape act, taking the next two games to cut the deficit to 3-5.
But this was not a WTA tournament, and the conditions were not exactly cooperating. The wind had its own ideas about ball trajectories, while somewhere nearby, a seagull seemed determined to provide unsolicited commentary.
Wang held firm to take the second set, 6-3.
The third set offered Eala another opening. She won the first game, perhaps enough to stir memories of the first-set surge. Wang answered by holding serve, then gradually taking control.
The Chinese player won five of the next six games to close out the match, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, ending Eala’s bid for gold and a potential free pass to the Olympics, and setting up an all-Chinese women’s singles final.
Eala still leaves Japan with a bronze, matching the medal she won at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China.
It is hardly the color she came for. But after skipping the China Open to wear Philippine colors in Japan, Eala leaves with another continental medal, another semifinal appearance and, presumably, another reminder that tennis can change its mind rather quickly.
