Diasporas’ passion is felt by a group of rising tennis stars

MELBOURNE – Even in defeat, Alexandra Eala’s fans took over the Australian Open.

On the afternoon of Jan 19 in Melbourne, lines snaked around Court 6 and food courts turned into fan zones, with thousands of people lining up to get a glimpse of the 20-year-old Eala, who has become a sporting avatar for the Philippines since her run to the semi-finals of the 2025 Miami Open, where she beat three Grand Slam champions.

Her fans roared her through a 6-0 first set against Alycia Parks of the US, and they cheered her off after Parks came back to win in three sets.

A day later, it was Indonesia’s Janice Tjen who had her chance for a star turn, at the closest thing she and Eala have to a home Grand Slam.

“I’m having that feeling,” Tjen, 23, said with a warm grin on Jan 20 after

beating Canadian No. 22 seed Leylah Fernandez in straight sets

.

Indonesia lies just 145km across the Timor Sea from Australia’s northern coast. Fernandez is the daughter of an Ecuadorian father and a Filipino mother and grew up in Canada. The court rocked with chants of “O Canada” and cascading moments of “Let’s go, Leylah!” and “Let’s go, Janice!” At times, the match felt more like a rowdy football duel between two small clubs in a tight, tense ground.

The cacophonous support for Eala and Tjen is shared by many other players in the draw, an illustration of how diaspora communities from countries that do not get many opportunities to cheer on one of their own on a tennis court show up at the sport’s biggest events. Tennis has long wanted, and needed, stars from all parts of the world, but it has been cautious about investing enough to grow the sport.

Now, the protagonists have arrived, and tournaments around the world might need some bigger buildings, especially in Melbourne and New York. Eala’s and Tjen’s fans packed stands for their matches at the US Open in 2025.

“Getting the chance, from Indonesia, it’s something special,” said Tjen, who played college tennis at Pepperdine in California. “It feels a little bit like home. Just knowing that a lot of Indonesians came up, came out today and supported me means a lot.”

Tjen said she found out around midday on Jan 19 that she and Fernandez would play on one of Melbourne Park’s six stadium courts, a move that allowed organisers to avoid the chaos of that day, when Eala’s fans might have filled Rod Laver Arena.

“It’s so special,” Eala said earlier in January during an on-court interview in Auckland, where the Filipino diaspora turned out for her in force. “If there’s one thing I learnt in 2025, it’s that home is the people and not the place.”

Eala’s defeat was at least good news for her fans in one sense – it guaranteed her participation in the new WTA 125 tournament in Manila, which would have been in doubt had she made the second week of the Australian Open.

Smaller tennis nations, which do not receive the investment or carry the institutional weight of the Grand Slam countries, are ready to throw their support behind their players whenever they arrive on the biggest stages.

Jan 21 was Zeynep Sonmez’s turn in the spotlight, as fans of Turkish descent swarmed Court 7. Turkish players have made the WTA Tour before, but Sonmez is breaking new ground. She also won three matches in qualifying to reach the main draw, allowing word to spread in Melbourne’s Turkish community that a run might be coming. They got rowdy in a hurry, as Sonmez beat Anna Bondar of Hungary in straight sets.

“I felt like I was at home,” Sonmez said. “I was feeling the energy. It was unreal.”

The Australian Open’s place in Melbourne’s cultural fabric has long made it a destination for the communities that make the city home.

The Greeks have packed the place over the years for Stefanos Tsitsipas and Maria Sakkari. Serbian fans have made themselves heard for all Novak Djokovic’s 10 singles titles here.

In 2025, the tournament turned yellow, blue and green for the first time in two decades, when teenage talent Joao Fonseca of Brazil arrived at his debut Grand Slam main draw and blitzed No. 9 seed Andrey Rublev in the opening round on Rod Laver Arena. By the time Fonseca’s second-round match rolled around, on the smaller 1573 Arena, the lines were about as long as those for Eala, with fans decked out in the yellow Brazilian football kit.

The 19-year-old Fonseca returned to the same arena on Jan 20, and lines to get into the general seating of the 3,000-seat stadium wound around the building once again. Fonseca faced Eliot Spizzirri but was eliminated in four sets, with a balky back hampering him.

There is no shortage of upshots from the past few days. The star power of these players, combined with the growing popularity of the biggest tennis events and their collective bid to outdo each other, have helped the Australian Open set attendance records.

The tournament has averaged more than 100,000 spectators per day, after a record-setting, pre-tournament week that drew in more than 200,000 fans. They were in overflow mode even for Eala’s practices, which threw her off a bit.

“It’s a learning process,” Eala said – for her and for the fans and organisers too. Many of Eala’s supporters were attending their first professional tennis match and they cheered for every point, no matter how it came. In the opening game, Parks missed two overheads to get broken after saving two break points. The roars were significant on the second, which Parks dumped into the net.

Eala, Fonseca and increasingly Sonmez present a tricky situation for the established tennis order. They have a ton of upside and potential, but their fandoms outstrip their rankings, particularly when paired with a similarly low-ranked opponent. Eala is the world No. 49; Parks is No. 99. Fonseca was seeded, but Spizzirri is No. 85. Sonmez and Bondar’s combined ranking is 186.

These matchups do not merit a stadium court in the opening round of a Major by those metrics. But by fan interest, and by the potential for tennis to extend its reach, they do. For the fans who want to see those matchups, the quandary usually results in waiting in line.

Bernard Mananes, who timed a visit from the Philippines to see his son at the start of the tournament, said during an interview on Jan 19 that his wife, Lolita, had to wait for four hours to get a seat on Court 6. He was not so lucky and he watched from the neighbouring food court.

“She’s young, but she’s trying her best,” he said of Eala.

A few feet from Mananes was Marlon Molina, a Filipino from London who saw Eala play at Wimbledon in 2025. He snapped a wefie with Eala near Henman Hill and had flown over 16,000km to catch her at the year’s first Grand Slam.

Suzanne Limpin and her husband, Michael, brought their two children from Queensland, Australia. Limpin was not a tennis fan until two years ago, when she started seeing highlights of Eala on a Filipino news channel she can watch in Australia. Now she and her husband cannot take their eyes off her.

“He watches her matches in the middle of the night,” she said, nodding toward her husband.

Prue Ryan, a spokeswoman for Tennis Australia, said that the excitement around Eala was “fantastic for the sport and an exciting sign for the future of tennis in the region”.

“Scheduling decisions should never be viewed in isolation, there are always so many variables to consider,” she said. “After weighing all factors, including the significant popularity of a range of players, Court 6 was the best option for capacity and accessibility.”

Eala, Tjen and other young players like them have to make their own trade-offs. Most players who have just broken into the top 100 do not play regularly in front of such fervent crowds.

Eala is learning to find that balance of tuning out the noise and drawing energy from it.

“When you’re in the zone and you’re competing, the competitive urge just takes over,” Eala said during an interview before the tournament. “There’s a lot of people watching, but you’re doing what you do, you’re doing what you know how to do. That’s why you have to be confident in yourself. It doesn’t help when you’re thinking, ‘Oh, everyone’s watching it’.”

For Tjen, who lost her second-round match against Karolina Pliskova, the attention and rowdy stadium against Fernandez had an air of familiarity, thanks to her time at Pepperdine and the University of Oregon. There was plenty of noise at matches against big rivals, such as Michigan, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.

She learnt then that her best strategy was to wear a pair of imaginary earmuffs and a set of blinders. Now, her opponents are the ones on the other side of the noise, and Tjen knows she is a part of something bigger than herself. Still, she cannot think about every match that way.

“It’s an honour to represent Indonesia here,” she said. “I just try to enjoy myself, and if I enjoy it, I can bring the best version of myself.”

Sonmez said there were plenty of Turkish fans cheering for her at Wimbledon in 2025, but it did not compare to Jan 21 in Melbourne Park, where the etiquette can be a little looser than at the All England Club. Although she lost her Jan 23 match to Yulia Putintseva, she could not be happier to see the new blood on the big stages.

“There are some countries that are very good at tennis – they’re, like, tennis countries,” she said. “We are not one of them. That is a good thing, because then there are more players, more surprises.” NYTIMES