It is not easy to arrive at Wimbledon, the oldest and most prestigious tournament in the sport, and find your place within its story. Elegance, tradition and silence remain the three defining principles, but the court is still the one place where surprises are not only accepted but expected: a rectangle of green grass where anyone can overturn the order of things. Even if you come from a country like the Philippines, where tennis has never been a national sport, and where giant screens are now being installed so people can watch a 21-year-old woman compete on the most iconic stage in the game.
Alexandra Eala, the first player from the Philippines in the Open Era to reach the second week of a Grand Slam, defeated defending champion Iga Świątek 7-6 6-2, delivering the upset of an edition that will remain unforgettable for her country. A nation of around 115 million people, historically accustomed to stopping for basketball or for the boxing nights of Manny Pacquiao, is discovering tennis through a young left-hander who built her game at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Manacor. Before this year, Eala’s biggest result was “only” a semi-final appearance at the 2025 WTA 1000 tournament in Miami. Then came the finest grass-court run of her career: the title at the WTA 125 event in Birmingham and a semi-final at the WTA 500 tournament in Berlin. Only a great performance from Jasmine Paolini interrupted a month that had transformed her from prospect into a global name.
Eala’s popularity, comparable on social media only to that of João Fonseca, reflects a wider shift: the way the Far East has been embracing tennis for several years. The new centre of gravity of Asian tennis lies slightly further north, among the towers of Hong Kong. The former British colony has become the region’s logistical and economic hub for the sport. The return of the men’s ATP 250 tournament to Victoria Park in 2024, after 22 years away, marked a significant restart. The numbers show the scale of the growth: the total prize money of the Hong Kong event rose from 661,585 dollars in 2024 to more than 700,000 dollars in January 2026, while the stands of Causeway Bay have continued to fill. A success also shaped by Coleman Wong, the home favourite: a 22-year-old already twice a Grand Slam junior doubles champion, who at the beginning of 2026 was named by Tatler among Asia’s “Leaders of Tomorrow”. But there are other markers of this transformation, beginning with the opening of the first Rafa Nadal Tennis Center in Asia, again in Hong Kong, inaugurated in July 2022 inside the prestigious Hong Kong Golf & Tennis Academy (HKGTA) in Sai Kung, where local talents are trained according to the same elite methodology developed in Manacor.
Hong Kong was also where the “Building a Champion Scholarship Fund” was created, a programme supported by major real estate groups that helps local under-16 and under-18 players make the transition towards professional tennis. Unlike the Middle East, which has built influence by acquiring tournaments and offering extraordinary prize money, Hong Kong appears to be following a different path: creating a sustainable ecosystem around the sport while attracting international partners. Historic events and new ATP and WTA tournaments at Victoria Park are now backed by major financial institutions such as Bank of China (Hong Kong), title sponsor of the men’s tournament, alongside Morgan Stanley and Corpay. Global insurance groups such as Prudential and the consulting expertise of Accenture complete this network. A collection of high-profile partnerships that shows how Hong Kong is offering international brands a privileged platform from which to engage with the economic growth of the wider region.
The scale of this shift became visible last June on the hard courts of the National Tennis Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. During a week of intense tennis and emotional momentum, the national teams of the Philippines — without their star Eala — and Hong Kong secured promotion together to Group I of the Billie Jean King Cup Asia/Oceania zone. A shared achievement, but above all a sign that the map of tennis in Southeast Asia is changing, challenging the old hierarchy of the ASEAN region. For decades, the leadership of the sport in the area had been a private conversation between Indonesia and Thailand, shaped by the achievements of Tamarine Tanasugarn and the Ratiwatana twins. But in June, the courts of Kuala Lumpur marked a clear change of direction. With promotion to Group I of the Billie Jean King Cup, the connection between Manila and Hong Kong took shape.