MANILA, Philippines — Filipino tennis ace Alex Eala faces a grizzled veteran in 12-time champ Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia in the first round of the WTA 1000 Madrid Open at the Arantxa Sanchez Stadium in Spain Wednesday.
World No. 44 Eala takes on No. 116 Pavlyuchenkova in their round of 128 match at 7 p.m. the earliest in Manila.
Pavlyuchenkova entered the main draw after winning her qualifying matches against Viktoriya Tomova, 6-3, 6-2, on Monday and Yuliia Starodubtseva, 6-4, 0-6, 6-4, on Tuesday.
While the 34-year-old Pavlyuchenkova is significantly ranked lower and older than 20-year-old Eala, the Russian possesses longevity as she has been playing professionally for 21 years now or since 2005.
Pavlyuchenkova won her last title (250-tier Strasbourg) in 2018 but she's still hanging with the best to this day, reaching the quarterfinals in both the Australian Open and Wimbledon last year.
She also reached the French Open final in 2021, the same year she won an Olympic gold medal in mixed doubles with Andrey Rublev at the Tokyo Games and achieved a career-high rank of No. 11 in November of that year.
Pavlyuchenkova hasn't advanced past the first round in any of her six tournaments this year but she has built some momentum entering this Madrid main draw.
Meanwhile, Eala has been generally playing well this season, ranking 17th even in the race to the Finals.
The lefty netter has struggled in clay so far, though, losing to Jelena Ostapenko at Linz Open round of 16, 4-6, 5-7, on April 8 and to Leylah Fernandez in Stuttgart Open round of 32, 1-6, 4-6, on April 14.
Eala aims to turn things around in Madrid where she also plays in the doubles side with pal Zeynep Sonmez of Turkey.
Eala and Sonmez take on the Taiwanese-Hungarian pair of Chan Hao-ching and Fanny Stollar in the first round on Thursday.
