Alex Eala has added another shiny line to an already crowded résumé, earning a spot on TIME100 Next 2026 as the only tennis player among the magazine’s list of rising figures shaping the future.
The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) said Eala was selected in the Innovators category, one of five groupings on the annual list that also includes Phenoms, Artists, Leaders and Advocates.
And the endorsement comes with some serious tennis pedigree. Rafael Nadal, the 22-time Grand Slam champion who has known Eala since she joined his academy in Mallorca at 13, wrote her profile for TIME, praising her game, maturity and poise.
“One of her greatest strengths is precisely her ability to listen, learn, and keep improving,” Nadal wrote, while also describing Eala as warm, approachable and humble.
Nadal had a more personal anecdote, too. Seven years after first meeting the young Filipina, Eala became the first person he played with after his retirement when she asked him to hit with her.
Not a bad hitting partner.
Eala’s rise has been anything but routine. She burst into the global spotlight in 2025 by reaching the Miami Open final as a wild card after beating three Grand Slam champions.
She has kept climbing since, surging from No. 140 in the PIF WTA Rankings to No. 18 and building a following well beyond the Philippines.
The 21-year-old also won her first WTA Tour title in Washington, D.C., this summer, another milestone in a career that has rewritten several firsts for Filipina tennis.
TIME’s recognition now puts her in a broader club of young figures being watched beyond their own fields.
For Eala, apparently, the tennis court is no longer the only place where the world is taking notice.
