"What's challenging is being able to travel with flexibility": Alexandra Eala opens up about traveling difficulty on Philippines passport

Philippines’ young tennis sensation, Alexandra Eala, has opened up about the difficulty of traveling because of her passport. The 19-year-old was the real surprise package during the recently concluded WTA 1000 event in Miami, but her journey ended after she lost in the semifinal to the 2024 US Open runner-up, America’s Jessica Pegula, with a score of 7-6, 5-7, 6-3.

During her way to the semifinal, Eala defeated three Grand Slam winners. She got the better of the reigning world number two, Poland’s Iga Swiatek, in the quarterfinal in straight sets with a score of 6-2, 7-5. In the third round, the youngster defeated the 2025 Australian Open champion Madison Keys in straight sets with a score of 6-4, 6-2. In the second round, Eala secured another straight-set win against the 2017 French Open winner Latvia’s Jeļena Ostapenko with a score of 7-6, 7-5.

Eala has been recently quoted in a report by Tennis.com, where she explained that she is having difficulty in traveling on the Philippines passport as in sports like tennis, players usually need visas in the space of a few days. As things stand, the Philippines passport is ranked 74th in the world. "What's challenging is being able to travel with flexibility," said Eala. "As a tennis player, you need to be very flexible with your schedule. You're going to make a lot of last-minute choices, and it doesn't allow you time to organize all of this—every single time—to have the visas ready."

Talking after her impressive outing at the Miami Open, Eala stated that she was happy with her performance in the competition and that she has no regrets. “To have a week like this, the stars need to align and they did this week,” she said back then. “Hopefully I can keep that up. That is my goal now, to keep this up. But there are so many times in tennis where you have to dig out the dirt to look for the positive and now I’m enjoying it because there’s so much positive around me and I don’t know how many times that has happened, so I’m just lucky to have been able to experience these two weeks. The match I played was amazing and Pegula played amazing. I definitely had my chances and I definitely have things that I could’ve done better, but I literally gave everything I had. As you see, I’m taped up like a mummy. I did everything and I have no regrets”.