MANILA, Philippines — Alex Eala's serve has always been suspect in her WTA career, with the speed of her first and second serves usually below the Tour average.
Per Google AI, the Filipino tennis ace fires around 92-98 mph on her first serve against the WTA's average of 100-105 mph, while her second serve registers 65-75 mph against the Tour's 85-90 mph.
Ironic as it may sound, that slow serve keyed her Wimbledon 7-6(9), 6-2 third-round win against defending champ Iga Swiatek in London Saturday night in Manila.
Swiatek shared that Eala's slower serve threw her game off.
“I think it was tougher mentally for me to accept these missed returns from the slow serves. I got to say it’s much tougher to return a serve like that than a normal serve," said Swiatek in the post-match interview.
“I know it was slow. I know exactly how it’s going to come to me. It’s such a different rhythm than what I usually have a chance to return. I felt like she was serving slower and slower, and it became tougher and tougher for me to return these serves. That, for me, was hard to accept."
Eala averaged 86.3 mph on her first serves and 75.8 mph on her second serves, while Swiatek logged 102.5 mph on her first serves and 89.4 mph on her second serves in their third-round clash.
Both players won 57 percent of first serve points (Eala: 36/63; Swiatek: 27/47), but Eala found more success in second serve points won with 55 percent (21/38) while Swiatek won only 32 percent (7/22).
The 21-year-old Eala also won more service games (7/10) compared to Swiatek (5/10) as well as return games won (5/10 to 3/10).
"Even though maybe the top players play super fast and serve fast, you also need to be ready for this kind of rhythm," said Swiatek.
“Yeah, I don’t know. Like, she served slow. You need to step in. The court becomes short suddenly. If I want to put my topspin, I feel like I need to really play short."
The 25-year-old further explained:
“But then many balls also just stayed, like, after the bounce. I had them there and didn’t really adjust to them well. I would really need to step in halfway to the court to play this return, like, more natural.
“I don’t know. Even though it’s super slow and people might think it’s easy to return that, it’s quite the opposite. I feel like, yeah, for sure something to work on.”
Told about Swiatek's comments, Eala said she thinks her serves have been improving.
“I have never really been the biggest server in comparison to a lot of the girls here. So I do my best to use my serve as an advantage. I think I have a lot of other strengths. Although I do believe it’s been improving a lot," said Eala.
“But yeah, every player’s different. Maybe Iga [Swiatek] today… She said that (about my serve)? I guess I did my job well."