Connecting with Alex

In between her emphatic grunts and booming balls is the beautiful transcendence of Alexandra Eala.

No, her transcendence comes not from witnessing firsthand a genius pushing forward the beauty of tennis like, for instance, those rare moments when men’s tennis great Roger Federer effortlessly “breaks through the brutal dictates of the power game and brings back an all-court style, to bring back art.”

Or when Eala’s idol and sometimes mentor, Rafael Nadal’s raw power take modern tennis’ defining power-baseline game as far as it goes.

Yes, Eala hasn’t yet reached that kind of transcendent tennis artistry. Alexandra Eala still plays a generic power-baseline game, a playing style that noted writer David Forster Wallace describes as “two heavy hitters standing back and blasting wrist-fracturing ground strokes at each other.”

That, however, doesn’t mean one can’t appreciate Eala’s current level of tennis. She is a first-rate hitter, a kick-ass power baseliner. She is, as of this day, the 45th-best women’s tennis player on the planet, the first Filipino to reach such heights.

Nor does it mean that Eala’s competent serves, characteristic of power-baseline players, is worrisome. The truly inspired parts to watch out for in her game are her powerful angular groundstrokes, her return of power serves, all of which tell of her incredible reflexes and ability to hit winners.

But Eala’s tennis is not all she is.

There’s also the awe-inspiring display of the Filipino spectator’s transcendence, the spectator’s other-worldly experience each time Eala goes on court in the world’s tennis capitals.

If that seems abstract, such transcendence can be reasonably described as a spectator’s profound emotional response to a spiritual connection with something outside of both the spectator’s and Eala’s individual selves.

So, far beyond the Filipino spectator’s emotional, transcendent experiences when Eala incredibly comes back from a seemingly lost cause — like her recent Abu Dhabi second round match — is the recognizable moment that the spectator’s loud cheers meaningfully declare that Filipinos aren’t invisible in foreign climes and that they’re a force to be reckoned with.

“Home is not a place, it’s the people,” perhaps sums up that stirring transcendence.

Spoken at the ASB classic in New Zealand, Eala not only spoke of her own boldness, her audacity and tenacity as a great Filipino tennis player but she also spoke volumes about the thousands of wildly cheering Filipino expatriates proclaiming that they too have the same exact stuff as her.

“It makes you proud being Pinoy here in Abu Dhabi because of Alex Eala. Since the Pacquiao era, no Filipino athlete has captured the nation’s collective spirit in the same way Alex Eala did,” said a Filipina OFW of that transcendence in Abu Dhabi, the first stop of Eala’s electric Middle East tour.

The tennis gods have since realized Eala’s awesome drawing power that has opened the formidable Filipino diaspora’s hearts and wallets and have since quickly offered her main draw spots in the Women’s Tennis Association’s remaining Middle East swing.

Next month, Alexandra Eala will also enter the main draw of the BNP Paribas Open, also known as Indian Wells in tennis.

Still, wherever Alex Eala goes there surely follows the Filipino expatriate’s boisterous “Laban Alex!”

And it’s amid those echoing lusty shouts that one suddenly realizes that the court Alexandra Eala is playing on isn’t just coordinates of time, of place, of emotion, but one where the Filipinos’ ambitions in a competitive world become inexplicably infinite.