{"id":13688,"date":"2025-04-26T13:13:49","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T13:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/madrid-open-2025-iga-swiatek-beats-alexandra-eala-to-avoid-miami-repeat\/"},"modified":"2025-04-26T13:13:50","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T13:13:50","slug":"madrid-open-2025-iga-swiatek-beats-alexandra-eala-to-avoid-miami-repeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/madrid-open-2025-iga-swiatek-beats-alexandra-eala-to-avoid-miami-repeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Madrid Open 2025: Iga Swiatek beats Alexandra Eala to avoid Miami repeat"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Iga Swiatek avoided another shock defeat against Filipina teenager Alexandra Eala by fighting back to win their Madrid Open second-round match.<\/b><\/p>\n

World number two Swiatek, who was stunned by Eala in Miami<\/a> last month, won 4-6 6-4 6-2 on the Spanish clay.<\/p>\n

A sticky start appeared to justify some pre-match talk that Swiatek might have issues dealing with her teenage opponent.<\/p>\n

“I understand that there’s hype about these young players, but you have got to be focused on yourself,” Swiatek said afterwards.<\/p>\n

“Honestly, I didn’t realise it, I had better things to think about.”<\/p>\n

Swiatek lost in the Stuttgart quarter-finals last week and, having received a bye in the Madrid first round, produced some edgy groundstrokes in a poor first set.<\/p>\n

A tally of 25 unforced errors indicated it was a performance nowhere near befitting of the WTA Tour’s dominant clay-court player of recent seasons.<\/p>\n

Mistakes continued to come as the 23-year-old from Poland fell a break down early in the second set.<\/p>\n

Swiatek, who is the reigning Madrid champion and has a host of ranking points to defend over the European clay swing, looked in serious trouble.<\/p>\n

It felt like the same story as when 19-year-old Eala, then ranked outside the world’s top 100, beat her on the Miami hard courts.<\/p>\n

But five-time major champion Swiatek refocused and realigned to break back, then took control as her improved power and precision from the baseline overwhelmed Eala.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Iga Swiatek avoided another shock defeat against Filipina teenager Alexandra Eala by fighting back to win their Madrid Open second-round match. World number two Swiatek, who was stunned by Eala in Miami last month, won 4-6 6-4 6-2 on the Spanish clay. A sticky start appeared to justify some pre-match talk that Swiatek might have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13690,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13688\/revisions\/13690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}