Photo from Instagram/@dyancastillejo
From national tennis champion to veteran broadcaster, Castillejo has spent decades experiencing Philippine sports from both sides of the microphone
MANILA — Long before Dyan Castillejo became a familiar presence at boxing matches, tennis tournaments and major sporting events around the world, she knew competition from another vantage point.
She was the athlete.
Castillejo spent much of the 1980s as one of the Philippines’ leading women’s tennis players, competing internationally before moving into broadcasting and beginning a second career that has kept her closely connected to Philippine sports for more than three decades.
The transition gave her an uncommon perspective. She first represented the country on the court, then spent much of her working life reporting on athletes doing the same.
Sports had surrounded Castillejo from an early age. Her father, Lino Castillejo, was a sprinter and football player who represented the Philippines at the 1958 Asian Games in Tokyo. He later managed the national football team and served as an official of the Philippine Football Association.
Several of his children gravitated toward competitive sports, and tennis became Dyan’s focus.
She developed into a national champion and competed at Junior Wimbledon and the Junior U.S. Open before representing the Philippines in the Federation Cup, now the Billie Jean King Cup, as well as the Asian Games and Southeast Asian Games. A 2016 Philippine Star profile described her as national champion for more than a decade and recorded appearances in 12 Federation Cups, three Asian Games and six SEA Games.
Her professional ranking provides a durable measure of that period. Official WTA records show Castillejo reaching No. 403 in singles and No. 245 in doubles in 1986.
At the 1987 SEA Games in Jakarta, she and her sister Nina won silver in women’s doubles. Castillejo also earned bronze in the women’s team and mixed doubles events at those Games.
Her playing career unfolded when Filipino tennis players had considerably fewer opportunities to build sustained careers on the international professional circuit.
As competitive tennis receded, broadcasting offered another path.
Castillejo joined ABS-CBN and built a career as a correspondent, anchor and television host. She became associated with The World Tonight and later Sports Unlimited, which evolved into Sports U, while her reporting expanded from tennis and basketball to boxing and major international competitions.
Boxing became one of her most visible assignments.
During Manny Pacquiao’s rise into a global attraction, Castillejo regularly reported from his training camps, weigh-ins and fights, interviewing Pacquiao, trainers and opponents. The work took her repeatedly to the United States and placed her near many of the defining moments of his career.
Her assignments eventually extended beyond conventional sports reporting to international pageants, including Miss Universe. She continues to cover that field for ABS-CBN alongside her sports work, with bylines on Miss Universe Philippines events in 2026.
Her family, meanwhile, carried the tennis connection into another generation.
Castillejo married businessman Anton Garcia in 1999. Their son, Matthew Castillejo Garcia, later represented the Philippines in Junior Davis Cup competition and played NCAA tennis at Hofstra University in New York, where he completed four seasons and studied economics.
Tennis has remained more than a former profession for Castillejo.
In 2017, she received the Fed Cup Commitment Award, an International Tennis Federation recognition of sustained service in international team competition. She is now a member of the board of the Philippine Tennis Association, the sport’s national governing body.
She also remains on the reporting beat.
In September, Castillejo filed repeatedly from the Singapore Tennis Open, covering Alexandra Eala, her opponents and the tournament’s growing Filipino following. Her Sept. 25 report on Tatiana Prozorova’s victory over Eala was among her latest ABS-CBN tennis bylines.
That work gives the later chapters of Castillejo’s career a particular resonance.
She competed when the presence of a Filipina on the international professional circuit was uncommon. Eala now competes regularly against the world’s leading players on the biggest courts in tennis.
Eala has since taken Philippine women’s tennis into new territory, becoming the first player representing the Philippines to win a WTA Tour-level singles title. By late September, she had risen to No. 18 in the world.
The careers belong to different eras, and direct comparisons have limits. Training, sports science, tournament access and the professional structure of women’s tennis have changed substantially since Castillejo competed.
What connects them is the vantage point.
Castillejo once traveled abroad with the Philippines beside her name as a player. Decades later, she is still courtside, this time documenting a generation reaching places Philippine tennis had not reached before.
The racket gave way to the microphone. The sport never really left.
