MANILA: Alex Eala said one of the most important lessons of her tennis career has been learning that her value as a person should not depend on whether she wins or loses a match.
The world No. 18, who talked about the change in her mindset during Maria Sharapova’s “Pretty Tough” podcast, was responding to a question about what she had needed to unlearn.
“To [attach] results [to my] self-worth is something I’ve had to unlearn because I felt that for a long time that if I wasn’t doing well, my self-confidence and my self-worth and how I’d look at myself would change in a negative way,” Eala said in the episode released last Oct 7.
“So those have to be separate.”
The 21-year-old rising Filipino star also spoke about the difficulty of accepting defeats in professional tennis, particularly after matches in which she had opportunities to win.
“Tennis is such a humbling sport. You lose almost every single week,” she said.
Eala acknowledged that reaching the top levels of the sport had brought new expectations, including matches in which she was considered the favorite. But she said her belief in herself and her team helps her maintain perspective after disappointing results.
She has hit a rough patch recently with two successive early exits to players outside of the Top 100 in the Asian swing of the WTA.
She lost to unseeded Tatiana Prozorova at the Singapore Open round of 16 in September, then bowed to Chinese qualifier Shi Han at the Wuhan Open round of 64 last Monday.
Eala, who skipped the China Open, also crashed out in the semifinals in the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games tennis competition, which led to a bronze medal finish despite being the top seed.
The current world No. 19 is looking to flip her fortunes in her last three tournaments of the season, starting with the WTA 500 Ningbo Open next week.
She is also due to compete in the Toray Pan Pacific Open, another WTA 500 event in Japan, before heading to the Hong Kong Tennis Open, which will wrap up her banner year. - Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN
