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| Claire Liu and Alex Eala are all smiles as they show off their trophies (Photo) |
Exhaustion and injury finally caught up with the Philippines' Alexandra Eala tonight as she succumbed to the steady pressure from American Claire Liu, who won the championship of the Hong Kong Tennis Open at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay.
Liu who was ranked 102 going into the match, lifted a crystal trophy made by Lalique, while Eala ranked no 17 and second seed in the tournament, got the smaller green
trophy as runner-up.
What
started as a test of each other’s ability, scoring 3-3 at the beginning of the
first set, deteriorated after Eala called a medical timeout with her behind at
3-4.
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| A medic added another bandage to Eala's sore knee early on in the first set |
A physiotherapist sprayed a pain killer on her right thigh, and then wrapped it up in tape. Eala decided to go right back to the match afterwards.
Her leg problem apparently began during her game with Tereza Valentova whom she
beat 6-4, 7-6 (7) in her first win over the Czech after two defeats, to advance
into the quarterfinals.
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| Basahin ang detalye! |
After
rejoining the game after the medical time-out, Eala never scored a point again as Liu wrapped up the set, 6-3.
At
the start of the second set, the two players traded deuces more than 10 times, before Liu
scored the first point. After that, the set turned into a rout, ending
at 6-0, with Eala unable to run after balls that she could normally return.
The game statistics were starkly one-sided: Liu had six aces to Eala's one, Liu had 33 winners against 16, Liu had 66 total points won against 52. Eala committed four double faults against Liu's one, while Eala had 17 unforced errors against Liu's 19.
The
battle ended in one hour and 33 minutes.
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| Eala was teary-eyed after the match, saying the past year was life-changing for her |
“This
season has … changed my life for the better,” Eala said as she shed tears
during the awarding ceremony. “I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve put in
this year and we’re the only ones who really know what it took to arrive to
this point in our journey. This is only the beginning and this one, like all of
them, is ours.”
She
added later: “I’ve been playing since I was four, but I feel like there’s a
long, long road ahead of me. I’m so excited about the journey with my team, and
I’m very grateful for everything we do together.”
Eala had hoped to add to her historic win in the WTA 500 final Washington DC in August, which made her the first Filipina to achieve the mark. That victory helped push her ranking from No 50 at the start of 2026 to No 17 going into the HK Open.
Liu, who was the 2017 junior Wimbledon champion but took a year off tennis last year, said: “This week has been really fun, but also really mentally tough… I was just trying to take it one day at a time, and I found myself in the final.”
In the doubles final held earlier at Victoria Park, Japan's Miyu Kato and Chinese Taipei's Chan Hao-Hing took the title, beating Talia Gibson and Maddison Inglis of Australia, 6-4, 6-4.
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