Alex Eala reaches the US Open third round and settles a Strasbourg score

Alex Eala beat Oleksandra Oliynykova 6-1, 6-4 on 3 September to reach the third round of the US Open for the first time. The match at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center lasted just over an hour. Eala, 21, seeded 17 and ranked a career-high WTA 18, hit 19 winners to 6 for the Ukrainian. She next plays the winner of Iva Jovic and Francesca Jones for a place in the second week.

The result reversed a 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 loss to Oliynykova at Strasbourg in May. Eala broke immediately and led 4-0 in the first set, the same start she had used a day earlier against American qualifier Mary Stoiana. Oliynykova broke in the fifth game. Eala broke back in the sixth and served out the set in the seventh. In the second set a single break separated them. Oliynykova held. Eala closed it in the tenth game.

The week in New York is the latest mark on a hard-court run that started when Eala won her first WTA title in Washington in early August, beating Jessica Pegula in the final after Pegula took the first set. She then won matches in Toronto and Cincinnati before Anisimova stopped her in three sets in the Cincinnati third round. Coming into Flushing Meadows she had won nine of her last 11 hard-court matches. A year ago she was ranked 75 and became the first Filipina to win a Grand Slam main-draw match when she beat Clara Tauson in three sets at this tournament. This year she arrived as the highest-ranked Southeast Asian player on record and the highest seed the Philippines has put into a major.

Queens has noticed. Filipino crowds filled sections of Louis Armstrong Stadium for the Stoiana match, which Eala won 6-1, 6-2 in 78 minutes. The New York Times put her on the front of its sports report as the player tying together a far-flung community in the borough. After the Oliynykova win she declined to game out the next opponent. "Who I play in the next round is definitely out of my control, but they are both great friends of mine, both such amazing people and players, so all I can do is wish them a great match and hope they have fun," she said.

Jovic, the 14th seed, leads the head-to-head 2-0. Jones trails Eala 0-1. Either match is a first for a Filipina in the second week of the US Open. Eala's Grand Slam ceiling so far is the Wimbledon round of 16 last month. The draw in New York now gives her a live chance to match or pass that mark on the surface that has paid her this summer.

The useful number is not the narrative about a neighborhood. It is 18, 17, and 19: ranking, seed, and winners in the second-round match. Those three figures are what a 21-year-old from the Philippines has put on the board in the largest stadium complex in tennis, against a player who had already beaten her this year. The next match decides whether the board still moves.