PH wins Mister Cosmopolitan 2026; 2nd crown in three years

PH breaks 'Vietnam curse' with Mister Cosmopolitan 2026 win

Armin P. Adina 
Inquirer.net
13 September 2026

A Filipino contender has finally won a pageant title on Vietnamese soil when John Eriq Bonifacio topped the 2026 Mister Cosmopolitan competition held in Nha Trang on Sept. 12.

The Kapampangan hunk bested 19 other aspirants at the fourth edition of the annual male search to inherit the title from Taiwanese titleholder Shawn Lin, who won at last year’s competition held in Thailand.

Pageant fans, particularly Filipinos, have coined the phrase “Vietnam curse” because delegates from the Philippines had previously never won in international competitions hosted in “the Land of the Ascending Dragon” despite sending formidable competitors.

The most recent “victim” of this curse was Asia Rose Simpson, who finished in the Top 12 of the 2026 Miss World pageant held on Sept. 5 despite topping the “Head-to-Head” Challenge and making the shortlist of several other fast-track competitions. Vietnamese delegate Le Nguyen Bao Ngoc claimed the Top 6 slot for Asia and Oceania.

Also fueling speculations of such a curse were 2023 Miss Earth Air Yllana Marie Aduana, 2024 Miss Cosmo Top 10 semifinalist Ahtisa Manalo, and 2024 Mister World Top 20 semifinalist Kirk Bondad.

Manalo would later compete at the 2025 Miss Universe pageant in Thailand, finishing third runner-up, while Bondad got redemption in the same country by winning the Mister International title last year.

During the question round at Mister Cosmopolitan, Bonifacio was asked,  “As a gentleman, what does having a noble heart mean to you, and how do you believe a man can demonstrate it through his action toward others?”

He responded: “For me, [a] gentleman with a noble heart is not defined by how he [dresses] or looks, but rather how he [treats] people with respect. This is something that I learned from my father who just passed away. It taught me that regardless of who they are, rich, poor, or what gender they choose, respect must always come first.”

For this year’s competition, the Mister Cosmopolitan pageant has adopted the tagline “Gentlemen with Noble Heart.”

Bonifacio added that many in today’s generation had already forgotten how to treat each other with respect. “But I am here right now standing in front of you, be a reminder to each [and] everyone, especially the youth, that to teach everyone with respect and kindness. Because I believe that the things you do in life reflects in return,” he said.

Aside from winning the top prize at the finale show, he also received the Best Physique and Best Catwalk awards at the preliminary competition.

In an interview after he posted his victory, Bonifacio expressed his gratitude to the Filipino people. “Maraming, maraming salamat sa Filipino fans na sumusuporta sa akin. We did it, guys. Mabuhay ang Philippines. Para sa inyo ito. Mahal ko kayong lahat,” he said.

(Thank you very much to the Filipino fans who are supporting me. We did it, guys. Long live the Philipines. This is for you. I love you all.)

Bonifacio’s victory marks the third straight year that a Mister Pilipinas Worldwide titleholder had topped an international competition. In 2024, Daumier Corilla became the first-ever Filipino delegate to be proclaimed Mister Global. And last year, Bondad scored the country’s second Mister International victory. /edv

The Philippines has posted its highest PISA scores since joining the test in 2018

PISA 2025: Philippines breaks out of bottom 10, sees best lift in reading

Story by Cristina Chi
Philstar Global
08 September 2026

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has posted its highest PISA scores since joining the test in 2018 and improved faster in reading than any other country with comparable data, according to the results released Tuesday, September 8.

However, nearly two in three Filipino students still fall short of having the minimum proficiency in science, mathematics and reading, according to the 2025 PISA results. 

Filipino students improved by an average of 16 to 20 points across all three subjects of science, reading and mathematics, enough to lift the country off the bottom rungs it has occupied since 2018. 

The Philippines notched a mean score of 373 in science (up 17 points from 2022), 371 in mathematics (up 16 points), and 367 in reading (up 20 points).

The gains in reading alone are worth roughly a year of schooling by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) own rule of thumb, which treats 20 points as one year's worth of learning. 

PISA is historically administered every three years and selects test-takers through random sampling. The test targets fifteen-year-olds as this is the age that marks the end of compulsory schooling in several territories.  

Some 8,000 students from at least 208 schools in the Philippines, 140 of which are public schools, participated in the 2025 PISA. 

Escaping stagnation 

The Philippines' showing in the 2025 PISA has allowed it to buck its own flatline trend since its last two participations in the global assessment.  

In 2018, the Philippines ranked last of 79 education systems in reading and second-lowest in mathematics and science. In 2022, it placed sixth-lowest in mathematics and reading and third-lowest in science among 81 countries.

For this year, the Philippines ranks 77th out of 91 systems in science, 

74th in mathematics,

and 72nd in reading,

based on a Department of Education (DepEd) presentation of the results the same day.

The number of participating countries and territories has also climbed, from 79 in 2018 to 91 in 2025, which widened the pool of countries a nation can outrank.

Well below the OECD average

The Philippines’ relative leap in its scores comes against a backdrop of a global slump, as the OECD average has dropped by 15 points in reading, nine in math, and three in science. 

The OECD average is the mean score across the organization's 38 member countries, most of them high-income economies including the United States, Japan, South Korea and much of Europe. The OECD designed and runs PISA.

ECD member nations stood at 482 in science, 463 in mathematics, and 461 in reading, leaving Filipino students trailing by 92 to 109 points.

This is a gap equivalent to four to five years of formal schooling, by OECD standards.

Nearly two in three lack basic proficiency

PISA measures students' performance through six proficiency levels. The OECD treats Level 2 as the baseline, or the point at which a student can "participate meaningfully in society."

For instance, in science, this means students who score at or above Level 2 can "use science as a tool for reasoning: explaining, interpreting, evaluating and making decisions in familiar real-world situations," the OECD wrote in the PISA 2025 report.

"The baseline is therefore meaningful because it represents a threshold of functional science literacy," it added.

A student at Level 2 in reading can identify the main idea in a text of moderate length. In mathematics, they can recognize how a simple situation can be represented mathematically.

Only about 36% of Filipino students reached Level 2 — the minimum proficiency PISA measures — in science, mathematics and reading in 2025, according to the results. That leaves nearly two in three below the baseline level in all three subjects.

This is already an improvement from the 2022 results, when only 16% to 24% reached minimum proficiency in the three subjects.

Meanwhile, highly proficient learners remain a tiny minority in the Philippines, based on the 2025 results, where only 0.3% of test-takers reached Levels 5 or 6 in any subject, the assessment’s highest performance bands.

Biggest leap in reading

The Philippines recorded the steepest ten-year improvement trend in reading of any education system with comparable data, according to the PISA 2025 report. 

The OECD measures long-term progress as an average change per decade. They do this, as explained in the report, by calculating the linear regression across all the cycles a country has taken.

In reading comprehension, the Philippines gained 38 points, ahead of Cambodia at 36 and Türkiye at 34. Qatar recorded 18 points and Taiwan (referred to as "Chinese Taipei" in the report) recorded 14.

When the Philippines first joined the PISA cycle in 2018, it ranked at the very bottom of all 79 participating countries at the time with an average reading score of 340. 

The Philippines has taken the test three times over seven years, improving 27 points in reading between 2018 and 2025. That works out to about 3.9 points a year, which the OECD scales to roughly 38 points over a decade.

The data shows the Philippines is also bucking an overall global decline in reading skills. According to the OECD, of 74 education systems with comparable data, three-quarters recorded significant declines. Only five, including the Philippines, showed improvements.

Two poor showings led to 'galvanized' effort in PISA 2025

Much of the 2018 and 2022 PISA results had checked out with the government's own data at the time showing low student proficiency and a learning crisis across core areas.

DepEd itself under then-Secretary Sara Duterte conceded, based on the 2022 PISA results, that the average 15-year-old Filipino student is academically five to six years behind their peers in OECD countries. 

The department had vowed to ramp up its preparations for the next PISA and had even formed a "PISA 2025 Task Force," among others.

Education Secretary Sonny Angara credited a mix of curriculum changes, remediation programs and even the provision of computers to students when he presented the results Tuesday.

The department was "galvanized to really do everything possible to help our students" and turn its attention to reading, writing and arithmetic, Angara said.

Angara said DepEd had studied the 2018 and 2022 PISA reports for practical fixes. One finding was that some students had never used a computer before the exam itself, which is computer-based.

The department surveyed schools to check that each had at least one computer, Angara said.

"We were surprised because we thought private schools already had computers," Angara said. "Even some private schools didn't have computers either." 

Jollibee Group named Global Growth Champion at the Globie Awards

Jollibee Group named global growth champion

Philstar Global
01 September 2026

MANILA, Philippines — Jollibee Group has been named Global Growth Champion at the inaugural Globie Awards, the awards program of the Global Restaurant Leadership Conference, which brings together senior executives in the global restaurant and food service industry.

The award recognizes companies that have demonstrated strong international expansion and impact in the global restaurant sector. Jollibee Group was selected from 12 brand nominees and received more than 74 percent of votes from the award’s advisory panel.

The Globie Awards recognize companies and leaders demonstrating excellence in global restaurant leadership, growth, innovation and operational impact. The award will be formally presented during the Global Restaurant Leadership Conference in November.

Jollibee Group has grown from a Philippine-founded business into a global restaurant group operating more than 10,700 stores and cafés across 33 countries, supported by 20 brands across owned, franchised and invested businesses. The recognition reflects the company’s global growth trajectory, operational agility, and strategic portfolio diversification as it continues to expand across key international markets.

Fil-Aussie to represent Australia at the Miss International 2026

MUPH alumna to represent Australia at Miss International 2026

Armin P. Adina
Inquirer.net
31 August 2026

Another Miss Universe Philippines alumna, Karenza De Leon, is set to represent Australia at the Miss International pageant.

De Leon was crowned Miss International Australia at the national search held at Revesby Workers’ Club in New South Wales on Aug. 30. De Leon will take over from Bella Dela Cruz, her Miss International Australia predecessor, was in the same Miss Universe Philippines batch. She was fielded by the Filipino society in Sydney and represented Lucena City.

De Leon previously competed at the 2025 Miss Universe Philippines pageant where she was fielded by the Filipino society in Australia. She represented Camarines Norte in the competition.

She will fly to Japan for the 64th Miss International pageant that will culminate in Tokyo on Nov. 25. She will try to score Australia’s fourth win in the global tilt.

The Australian national pageant was mounted by Stargazer International Group of Filipino-Australian Julieta De Leon. The competition also crowned other titleholders.

Succeeding Filipino-Australian Alexa Roder as Miss Earth Australia was Helena Ristevski, a Sydney-based model with European ancestry.

Kajol Arishma Chand inherited the Miss Eco International Australia crown from Adriana Gravador, another Filipino-Australian beaity queen who was second runner-up at the 2026 Miss Eco International pageant held in Egypt.

Ristevski will try to post Australia’s second Miss Earth victory at the 26th edition of the international pageant later this year. Jessica Lane became the first Australian titleholder when she won at the contest held in Manila in 2024.

Chand will represent Australia at the 2027 Miss Eco International pageant and try to post the country’s first-ever victory at the global competition. /edv

Philippines scores back-to-back international pageant wins

Philippines scores back-to-back international pageant wins

Margarette Briton is Miss Interglobal 2026; Jamie Casiño is Miss Equality World.

Jojo Gabinete
Philippine Entertainment Portal
31 August 2026

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines once again proved its supremacy in the field of beauty pageants when two Philippine representatives won consecutive international beauty titles on Sunday, August 30, 2026.

Margarette Briton, 26, won the inaugural edition of Miss International 2026 held in Bali, Indonesia.

Jamie Casiño, 28, was crowned Miss Equality World 2026 at the coronation ceremony held at MGI Hall in Bangkok, Thailand.

MISS INTERGLOBAL 2026

Nabila Fenelia of Indonesia was the first runner-up in Miss International 2026.

Second runner-up is Nicole Missios of Australia.

Dariya Toleukhan of Kazakhstan was the winner of the Mrs. Interglobal 2026 category winner.

Margarette was awarded four special awards at Miss International 2026: Star Connect Award, Social Impact Award, Dinner Dress Award, and National Costume Excellence Award.

MISS EQUALITY WORLD 2026

Miss Equality is an international beauty pageant for transgender women that kicked off in Bali, Indonesia, in 2022

"Gender equality and human rights" are the slogans promoted by Miss Equality World.

Jamie Casiño was the first Filipino to win the aforementioned crown and title.

There are thirteen official candidates for Miss Equality World 2026.

If Jamie hadn't won, Filipinos wouldn't have known that there was such a beauty pageant except for Miss International Queen.

Allana Cordero of Mexico was the first runner-up in Miss Equality World 2026 and Vi Ai Giang of Vietnam was the second runner-up.

In addition to being crowned Miss Equality World 2026, Jamie is the recipient of The Voice of Equality award.

Jamie showed off his intelligence with his winning answer to the question: “If you had to choose between strengthening anti-discrimination laws and investing directly in economic opportunities for transgender communities, which would you prioritize and why?"

She answered: “As a trans advocate, I would prioritize making gender-affirming care accessible to everyone because I do believe that if we give this gender-affirming care for transwomen, then we would be able to save lives, just like how we queens here do advocate for trans people.

“I am more than ready to be the voice of equality, and to work with the Miss Equality World Organization and remind trans people that they are not alone, so come join with me.

"Let’s save lives together for a better tomorrow.”

Filipino sardine brand Mega to be distributed by Kroger in US markets

Filipino sardine brand reaches US mainstream market

Jan Milo Severo
Philstar Global
30 August 2026

MANILA, Philippines — Filipino food brand Mega Sardines will soon be more accessible in the United States with its products set to reach around 2,750 stores under Kroger and its affiliated supermarket chains.

The products are already available in stores across the US, with nationwide availability targeted by mid-September.

Calling it an "exciting time" for the brand, the expansion is seen as a major step in the Filipino brand's move to grow its international business to a wider global market. 

Mega Prime Foods chief executive officer Michelle Chan said the US has been one of their key priorities, with the team working on its US expansion for nine months that includes investment and participation in major US food shows. 

Mega Sardines will be available through Kroger and its affiliated banners, including Mariano’s, Fry’s, Dillons and Pick ’n Save.

According to the company, Mega is currently the only Filipino brand listed by Kroger.

The US market is considered particularly important because of its large Filipino-American population, as well as the potential to introduce the brand to mainstream American consumers.

The company has been working with international sales partner The Turnaround Artists (TTA) as it expands overseas.

Aside from the United States, the company has recently entered markets including Azerbaijan, Kenya and Jordan, with at least 10 other countries reportedly in its development pipeline.

“Our dream is not simply to become a successful Philippine sardine brand. Our dream is for a Filipino brand to become the number-one sardine brand in the world,” Marvin Tiu Lim said.

Alexandra the Great - How Eala united Filipinos worldwide

 How Alex Eala Became a Symbol of the Philippines

At only twenty-one, the tennis phenom is likely already the best-ever player from Southeast Asia. Now she is seeking her first Grand Slam title at this summer’s U.S. Open.

Albert Samaha
The New Yorker
August 29, 2026

Practice Court No. 3 at the U.S. Open, in Queens, sits at the far end of the grounds, beyond the stadiums. Last Sunday, a week before the start of the main draw, the court was at capacity. Fans packed the bleachers, sweating under the summer sun, or lined up along the concourse, hoping to nab a seat. There were plenty available at adjacent practice courts, where the Grand Slam champions Naomi Osaka and Aryna Sabalenka were warming up. But this crowd had come for Alexandra Eala, a twenty-one-year-old Filipino rising star, who has recently reached a career-high world ranking of eighteen, making her the highest-ranked Southeast Asian player in women’s tennis history. In the stands, I met Ysa Llanos, a twenty-one-year-old Filipino American. “It’s inspiring to see somebody who looks like you, talks like you, be in the kind of places we’ve never been in before,” Llanos told me, explaining that she had travelled from New Jersey with her parents and her thirteen-year-old brother to get a glimpse of Eala.

Everywhere that Eala plays, from Melbourne to Abu Dhabi, legions of fans follow, often waving the Philippine flag and signs in Tagalog (“Laban, Alex!”). Eala mania, people call it. “Many, many Filipinos, they come to watch her win,” Joan Bosch, Eala’s coach, told me recently. “You try to explain to her—there is no pressure.” Yet, in her relatively short career, practically every accomplishment of Eala’s comes with a historic superlative. Eala is the first Filipino to win a junior Grand Slam, beat a Top Ten opponent, win a Grand Slam match, reach Wimbledon’s fourth round, win a Women’s Tennis Association tournament, and attain a Top Twenty ranking. In the Philippines, many time zones away from these major tournaments, fans organize watch parties for matches that often start after midnight. Eala’s popularity has outpaced her on-court success. To meet the surging demand at tournaments, where early-round matches take place concurrently across the grounds, schedulers have scrambled to move Eala to the main courts, which have the most seats and are usually reserved for the highest-ranked players. The chairman of a recent tournament in Washington, D.C., estimated that eighty per cent of ticketing inquiries were for Eala. The Canadian Open’s director credited Eala with unprecedented ticket sales, remarking in a press conference that “a sold-out Wednesday night this early in the tournament is really unheard of.” In a post-match interview during the Dubai Tennis Championships, the American star Coco Gauff thanked Eala “for bringing a new demographic” to tennis. “I’ve played this tournament for many years, and to see the stadium full means a lot,” she said. Venus Williams, who has partnered with Eala in doubles, deemed her a “world star.”

Nowhere is Eala’s fandom more visible than at the U.S. Open. Around fifty thousand people of Filipino descent live in Queens, many of them in Woodside, which boasts New York City’s oldest Jollibee, a mega-popular Filipino fast-food chain. If Wimbledon, with its docile audience dressed in white, embodies a subdued, Old World version of the sport, Flushing Meadows Corona Park has historically flaunted the rambunctious spirit of a new version of tennis. In recent years, the U.S. Open has turned into one of the city’s most glamorous events. Anna Wintour sits beside Lewis Hamilton. Beyoncé and Jay-Z cheer on Serena Williams. Barack and Michelle Obama show up for a first-round Gauff match. Long lines snake toward bars selling the tournament’s specialty cocktail, and a David Chang stall cooks elevated chicken tenders. Last year, a nosebleed seat for Gauff’s fourth-round match, against Osaka, cost around eight hundred dollars. This year, Eala is among the biggest draws. For many of her fans, the practice court offered a chance to see her up close for free. “She makes us so proud,” a teacher who drove in from Jersey City with her family told me. “We want to be a part of it.”

Eala has said that tennis was not “love at first sight” but, instead, a game she embraced gradually. Tennis was her grandfather’s idea. Although Roberto Maniego had no formal training, he read books and magazines about the sport and instilled in his grandchildren the idea that tennis offered a path to a college scholarship. Many public tennis courts in the Philippines have a surface made of crushed shells, rather than the grass, clay, or asphalt topped with acrylic that is standard in top competitions, so Maniego trained her and her older brother, Miko, at Valle Verde, a palm-lined country club that featured the only hard court anywhere near the their home, in Quezon City. The court had also been used for basketball, with the hoops still up behind the baseline.

Tonette Mendoza, a former college player who is now the executive director of the Philippine Tennis Association, first saw a six-or-seven-year-old Eala play at a local tournament. By then, Miko, three years older, had a growing collection of tennis-championship trophies. Eala would often partner with him against boys his age, frequently facing the brunt of the action. “The boys are always attacking her,” Mendoza told me. But rather than drift back to the baseline, Mendoza explained, “she was at the net and clearing, and I said, Oh, my God, this girl is so strong.”

Eala’s training would begin at five in the morning; after school, she did her homework in the car on the way to evening practice. She competed in tournaments around the country, and before long she was travelling the world. As a young child, in a nationally televised news segment, she expressed her dream to win all four Grand Slams. In another TV interview, a few years later, Eala said that she didn’t have much time for “normal children things,” such as “a party with friends or going to the mall. I don’t have the hours. I’m tired then.”

Her school from fourth to seventh grade, Colegio San Agustín Makati, accommodated her tournament schedule. Rowen Ayta, her sixth-grade teacher, told me she had to accept that Eala “would not be attending school every day.” She would often return from competitions to find a stack of waiting assignments, and would have to catch up on weeks of missed lessons within days. Another one of her teachers, Robynne Reyes, told me about a quote Eala picked for her sixth-grade yearbook: “I am motivated by the fear of being average.”

After Eala won a tournament in France at twelve years old, she attended the Rafa Nadal Academy, which offered her and her brother the chance to train and study at the school’s campus in Manacor, Spain. Her coach at the academy, Daniel Gomez, told me that he was immediately struck by the maturity of her game. She anticipated her opponent’s moves and executed with precise timing. Her serve was slow, but she compensated with aggression, fearlessly charging forward, cutting down her rival’s time to react. The coaches helped her hone the fundamentals, adding spin to her serve and power to her forehand, but Gomez also saw Eala developing tools that were harder to teach. She carried herself with a calmness rare in a sport that tends to incite extreme emotions, making calculated decisions on the court and celebrating wins with silent fist pumps. During a tournament in South Africa, when she was fourteen, Eala was a few points away from clinching the match when her opponent began to climb back. Eala paused to huddle with Gomez, but she wasn’t seeking counsel; she just wanted to “create doubt in the opponent’s mind,” he told me, making it seem as if she might change her strategy. Gomez remembers thinking, “My God, this girl is different.”

At age fourteen, Eala won a junior Australian Open doubles title. At fifteen, she reached the junior French Open semifinals; then, at sixteen, she won a junior French Open doubles title. A few months after her seventeenth birthday, in 2022, she raised a junior U.S. Open trophy as the first-ever Filipino winner. A few weeks later, Eala was on the cover of Vogue Philippines.

While her brother earned a tennis scholarship to Penn State, Eala dove straight into the professional circuit, competing in every event she could find. Even before she climbed the rankings, when she was playing in matches that typically feature empty stadiums, her fan base followed. “Filipinos would come to support me,” she said, on “The Player’s Box” podcast. At the 2025 Miami Open, she upset three Top Thirty players, before narrowly falling to Jessica Pegula, an American, who later marvelled at how many Eala fans were in the stands at a U.S. tournament. “Why is nobody cheering for me?” she joked.

Then, at the 2025 U.S. Open, with a rowdy crowd behind her, Eala won her first Grand Slam match, breaking into the Top Fifty in the global rankings soon after. At the 2026 Australian Open, so many people showed up to watch her practice that she had trouble getting through the crowd. All of a sudden, she was famous enough to need a security escort. She beat Top Ten players in Dubai and Berlin, and then, at Wimbledon this summer, defeated the then reigning champion, Iga Świątek, to reach the fourth round. In Washington, D.C., in August, she defeated three Top Fifteen players en route to the tournament title. After a match, an on-court interviewer asked, “What is it like to be this popular everywhere around the world?” Eala replied, “I think the question should be rephrased. It’s ‘What is it like to be Filipino?’ ”

Eala has embraced the role of ambassador. In online videos, she lists puto bumbong as one of her favorite Filipino foods, argues that the resort island Boracay isn’t overrated, shares that she named one of her (pig) slippers Chicharrón, and proclaims her love for karaoke. She walked the red carpet of an awards gala in a Filipiniana gown designed by her uncle. Nike released a commemorative shirt bearing the Philippine national flower, the sampaguita, over a grass court, and supplied her with a visor stitched with a Tagalog phrase that means “once it grows, it cannot be stopped.” Clips of her cursing in Tagalog reliably go viral. In Queens, I spoke to one Eala fan who mentioned kapwa, the Filipino virtue of honoring a shared identity, and another who brought up bayanihan, a Filipino concept of cooperation rooted in the traditional practice of a community carrying a neighbor’s house to another location.

History has left Filipinos hungry for solidarity. Across the archipelago’s more than seven thousand islands, countless sovereign communities once bloomed with distinct languages and traditions, until Spain claimed them all under a single name. The writer José Rizal described Filipinos, in the nineteenth century, as a fragmented people unified by a “common misfortune.” After the Philippines attained independence, in 1946, with the country’s economy constricted from more than three centuries of colonization, a diaspora spread around the world. Immigrants raised children in the U.S. or Australia, and overseas foreign workers sought jobs as housekeepers around the Persian Gulf or as deckhands on cruise ships. Even today, remittances account for roughly ten per cent of the Philippine economy.

When Eala was growing up, Manny Pacquiao united Filipinos anytime he stepped into the boxing ring. In the Philippines, “it was like a holiday,” Eala said on Andy Roddick’s podcast, “Served.” “Crime rates would go down, everyone would gather.” If, as Jimmy Connors has said, tennis is boxing at ninety feet—a lonely battle of wills that punishes the slightest lapse in concentration—Eala’s southpaw forehand drives resemble Pacquiao’s blazing left hooks. In a post-match interview at Wimbledon, Eala tearfully explained that a third-round win “may seem small” for some players, “but for someone who grew up in the Philippines,” training “every day after school with my ruffled socks and my light-up shoes and chubby cheeks, so—to her, this is everything.”

Mendoza, of the Philippine Tennis Association, told me that new public courts are being built around the country, and the government is constructing a new national tennis center. Eala’s grade-school tennis coach, Polly Hipolito, said that in the past year the number of students who’ve signed up for tennis at the school has doubled, explaining that several recent players told him, “I want to be like Alex.” Some kids call her Ate Alex, Tagalog for “older sister.” “People tell me I’m a role model for people back home,” Eala said on “Served.” “I’m the only Filipina that people really see in high-level tennis . . . so I really do my best to be on my best behavior and represent the best of the Philippines.”

With her new stature, some in the Philippines have sought to project Eala onto their political agendas. Pacquiao, after all, eventually became a senator and an ally of the disgraced former President Rodrigo Duterte. After partisans on social media argued that Eala wore a green outfit to a match to express support for Duterte’s embattled daughter, Vice-President Sara Duterte, who is facing an impeachment trial, others responded by circulating a fake quote claiming that Eala opposed her. And, during the trial, legislators on both sides gave speeches celebrating Eala. But, for now, Eala remains a unifying figure and seems focused on becoming more than just the best tennis player from the Philippines, a title she has already earned. “Every error I hit on the court keeps me grounded,” she said in a Tennis Channel interview. “When I wake up in the morning, I have bad hair—keeps me grounded.”

Eala’s first competition at this year’s U.S. Open was an early morning mixed-doubles match on Tuesday. Filipinos filled the stadium’s lower bowl. Some told me that they’d woken at five to make the commute from other boroughs, New Jersey, or upstate. “Only for Alex,” Gilda Wong Penaco, a seventy-one-year-old from Yonkers, who came with a group of fellow retired nurses, told me.

Tagalog chatter filled the air. People ran into folks they knew. “It’s like we’re in the Philippines,” Christian Battung, a thirty-two-year-old from New Jersey attending the match with several family members, told me. After watching Eala on TV last year, Battung bought a pair of racquets and started playing the game with his three-year-old son.

Among the young fans in the crowd was a six-year-old girl. Her parents, Monique and Anthony David, had driven an hour and a half to get to Flushing Meadows. Anthony told me that they had watched so many of Eala’s matches that their daughter had become enamored. Their daughter knows Eala is Filipino, “but I don’t think she really understands what it means,” Monique said. “She just sees her as a tennis player.” ♦