The Filipino Star at the U.S. Open Igniting a Neighborhood in Queens

Alex Eala fans wave the Philippine flag during her exhibition match at the U.S. Open last week

In an article for The New York Times, Hilary Howard writes about how the 21-year old tennis sensation Alex Eala has charmed the tennis world and untied her compatriots from the Philippines and the Filipino diaspora.

Little Manila, a one-block thicket of restaurants and businesses in Woodside, Queens, is the heart and soul of Filipino culture in New York City. Here, momentum is building in the quiet micro-neighborhood, just a 10-minute subway ride from the boisterous U.S. Open, as Alex Eala, the young Filipino tennis star, starts her long-shot run to win one of the largest and most lucrative tennis tournaments in the world.

At a pop-up food market in Little Manila last weekend, while rice cakes and barbecue cooked over hot coals on the sidewalks, the cheerful response among Filipino New Yorkers, upon being asked if they knew about Eala, was nearly universal: “Of course!”

Llalen Cruzat, who was giving out free samples of kapeng barako, a bold Philippine coffee, said she had been seeing and hearing Eala’s name everywhere. “Facebook, Instagram, even in church, people are talking about her.”

Eala has reached icon status among Filipinos. Last month, the left-handed 21-year-old became the first tennis player from the Philippines — man or woman — to win a major singles title. But for Filipinos, she is not simply an ambassador for the sport. Her success is giving the country, a large, dispersed archipelago of more than 7,000 islands in Southeast Asia, as well as its diaspora, a reason to unite.