By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
You never know when you can catch a rising star at the Miami Open. Or two!
Alexander Eala of The Philippines and Victoria Mboko of Canada are two of the most popular players on the WTA Tour and two of most popular females athletes in all of sport. You would not have known that they would become as such if you came to the third day of the Miami Open on March 21, 2025.
At the time, both players were ranked outside of the top 100 in the WTA Tour rankings and had only handful of fans in the stands watching their matches. Eala was ranked No. 140 in the world and had only won one WTA Tour level singles match in her career before her first round Miami win over Katie Volynets. Mboko was ranked No. 162 and her first-round win over Camila Osorio was her first career WTA Tour match victory. With little fanfare, both of these future stars were playing side-by-side on adjacent courts in second round matches in Miami in 2025.
Eala was facing former Roland Garros champ Jelena Ostapenko on Court 4 in front about 20 to 30 fans. Who would have known that less than a year later, Eala would cause overcrowding for her matches at Grand Slam tournaments. Even James Blake, the Miami Open tournament director, said before the tournament that he would work to schedule all of her matches on the Stadium Court to prevent the fan control problems that have wreaked havoc at tournaments around the world. I had a hint of the potential popularity of the teenager from The Philippines when I saw her in the U.S. Open qualifying rounds the previous summer and seeing the massive number of fans cramming to get photos of her and with her. People were even passing their babies to Eala for her to hold and kiss and take photos with.
Against Ostapenko that day, Eala went down quickly 0-4 but then rallied to win the first set. I then moved to the adjacent Court 4, with the intention of watching the No. 10 seed Paula Badosa, the former world No. 2, playing against Mboko, who I had not heard too much about but was quickly intrigued. Mboko’s rocket forehand was impressive and after losing the first set, she rolled to the second set 6-1. The momentum switched a Badosa went up 5-2 in the third set, but Mboko showed her grit and came back to force a final-set tiebreaker that she lost 7-3.
As Badosa and Mboko were engaged in furious baseline exchanges, I could still see half the court of the adjacent Court 3 where Eala was continuing her assault on Ostapenko and I was closely following the score on the ATP/WTA live scores app. Not only was Eala able to win only her third WTA Tour singles match win against the Latvian, but she went on a run that saw her beat Australian Open champion Madison Keys and former world No. 1 Iga Swiatek en route to the semifinals, where she lost to Jessica Pegula. However, her run gave her global recognition, particularly in her sports-enthused native Philippines, where her status went supersonic.
While Mboko wasn’t able to advance another round in Miami, she received a wild card into another Masters 1000 event in her native Canada four months later where she translated her wild card into an improbable run to the title, defeating former world No. 1 and four-time major champion Naomi Osaka in the final. A year after winning her first career WTA Tour-level match at the Miami Open, she is now in the Top 10 in the world. Eala, one year after her semifinal run as the world No. 140, stands at No. 32 in the rankings.
Both players are now seen as some of the leading faces of the new generation of WTA Tour stars. And fans could have first discovered these stars on a random outer court on the third day of the tournament.
