by Bob Stockton
Some finals are decided in straight sets on a dry afternoon. This one took two days, three rain delays, and a third-set bagel to settle
Alexandra Eala is the champion of the Mubadala DC Open, and she earned every hour of it. The 21-year-old Filipina came back from a set down to beat top seed and world No. 3 Jessica Pegula 4-6, 6-4, 6-0 in a final that started Sunday afternoon, got swallowed by thunderstorms not once but twice, and finally finished Monday — a fitting climax to a week that had already delivered Eala’s biggest scalp yet, a win over Naomi Osaka in the semifinals.
The match was never going to be simple. Scheduled for a noon start on Sunday, it didn’t get underway until roughly three o’clock as storms rolled through the Washington area. When play finally began, Pegula looked every bit the No. 3 seed, breaking twice to close out the first set 6-4 and building a foothold that seemed to be growing into control. She led 1-2 in the second when the skies opened again. Play was suspended just before 4 p.m., and after hours of waiting and a hopeful re-opening that never quite materialized, organizers called it for the night around 9 p.m. Eala and Pegula would have to finish what they started — on Monday.
Whatever nerves the delay might have stirred up, Eala didn’t show them when the players returned to Stadium Court. She steadied the second set, leveling it at 6-4 to force a decider, and then produced the kind of tennis that turns a good week into an unforgettable one. The third set wasn’t close. Eala swept it 6-0, breaking down a suddenly error-prone Pegula and finishing the biggest win of her career in front of a stadium that had turned unmistakably pro-Eala, thick with Filipino flags and noise.
It’s Eala’s first WTA-level title, and it arrives at a career-high moment — she’ll rise further up the rankings off the back of a run that included wins over a top-4 seed in Osaka and now a win over the world No. 3 in the final. For a player who was ranked outside the top 140 barely a year ago, the trajectory has been staggering.
For Pegula, Washington has long been personal — this is the tournament where she won her very first WTA title back in 2019, and she’d returned to the final for the first time in seven years hoping to add a second trophy on the same court. Instead, she’ll leave with a tougher story: a match she led for the better part of two rain-soaked days, lost in a stretch where nothing went right in the decider.
Rain delays have a way of exposing character as much as they interrupt a scoreline, and Eala’s response — regrouping overnight, then dismantling a set higher-ranked opponent 6-0 in the decider — says plenty about where her game is heading. A maiden title against a top-3 player, won the hard way, is exactly the kind of result that turns a breakout season into a full arrival on tour.
