Maya Joint beats Alex Eala in stunning Eastbourne final, saving four championship points
When tennis powers downgraded the storied WTA tournament at Eastbourne, on the south coast of the U.K., fans and business owners in the town feared the consequences. It went from a 500-level event to a 250, named for the ranking points awarded to the winner, which comes with stricter regulations about how many top players can enter. Would fans be as interested?
If the first WTA 250 final there is anything to go by, they need not worry. The weekend before Wimbledon, with most of the tennis elite either in south-west London or a town in Germany, two rising prospects played a barnstorming 22-point final-set tiebreak, which ended with Maya Joint of Australia triumphing over Alex Eala of the Philippines, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6(10).
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Joint saved four championship points. Eala ended the match in tears. Both of them saved their best, bravest tennis for the most decisive moments of the match. On the championship points that Eala missed, she missed in trusting her shots, not because she was tentative.
Joint is 19 and Eala is 20. Joint, who was born in the U.S. but represents Australia, planned to play college tennis in Texas, but turned professional shortly after earning her first WTA Tour win at the 2024 U.S. Open. Eala, who has been making tennis history for the Philippines since she was 12, announced herself to the tennis world earlier this year in Miami, when she beat three Grand Slam champions in a row on the way to the semifinals. On the grass at Eastbourne, they showed why they are both ready to rise further, even if one of them had to lose.
Over in Bad Homburg in Germany, world No. 3 Jessica Pegula's grass-court acumen proved a bridge too far for Iga Świątek, the five-time Grand Slam champion who is much better on it than most in tennis — and even Świątek herself — would assume. But to be that player, the Pole needs her serve to fire. It fired all week in Germany, until the final.
She could not find her targets in the first set, making just under half of her first serves and putting herself on the back foot too often. Pegula broke with the score at 3-3, and did it again at 5-5 in the second set, edging out a 6-4, 7-5 win and becoming the only women's player to win a title on all three surfaces in 2025.
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Even in defeat, the second set should give Świątek more belief about her grass capabilities. She was the dominant player once rallies began and constantly ate into Pegula's serve advantage, but she also couldn't convert that dominance into break points. Pegula's flat, persistently powerful ball led Świątek to overpress, even when she was seeing results from hitting with more shape and height to push the American back, like she did in beating Jasmine Paolini in the semifinal.
All four finalists will now travel to Wimbledon, where the main draw begins June 30. In the meantime, Eastbourne can bask in the knowledge that an administrative downgrade need not diminish its importance. Produce quality tennis, and they will come.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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