On October 13, 2024, Alex Eala lost the first round of qualifying at the Ningbo Open in China. Qualifying is the set of preliminary rounds that lower-ranked players must win to reach the main draw. She was 19 and ranked No. 148. She lost 4-6, 3-6 to Australia’s Priscilla Hon, ranked No. 210, and hit eight double faults.

On Thursday she was back at the same tournament, on Center Court, in the round of 16, as the world No. 20. She lost 7-5, 6-4 to Russia’s Diana Shnaider, the sixth seed and world No. 13, after saving six of Shnaider’s seven match points. A match point is a point that ends the match if the player ahead wins it. Eala hit one double fault in 1 hour and 55 minutes.

The Day-After Verdict

By Friday morning, much of the coverage called it a nightmare week for a player still searching for answers, and some fans said she should end her season. The statistic behind that holds up: it was her fourth defeat in her last five tour-level matches. The framing leaves out who beat her and how.

The last game ran about ten minutes and went to deuce seven times. Deuce is the 40-all tie that forces a player to win two points in a row to take the game. Shnaider has made the Ningbo quarterfinals three times in four visits. Afterward she described Eala this way: “She never goes back down. She steps in, she rips the ball.”

Two Octobers in Ningbo

Her first-round win over Diane Parry on Monday was her first main-draw match at this tournament. The 2024 trip had ended before the main draw began. Put the two visits side by side and the gap is large. She went from No. 148 to No. 20. Her opponent went from No. 210 to No. 13, and the round went from the first of qualifying to the round of 16. Her double faults dropped from eight to one.

Shnaider has her own Ningbo history. In 2023, at 19 and ranked No. 85, she reached her first tour final here, when the event was still a WTA 250, and lost to Ons Jabeur 6-2, 6-1. She has since climbed to No. 11 in the world and returned three times. On Thursday Eala was playing someone who treats this tournament as home ground.

How the Match Turned

Eala and Shnaider are both left-handers, and the first eight games were all holds of serve. Eala dropped serve first, at 4-4, after saving two of three break points. A break of serve means winning a game the opponent was serving. From there, eight of the next nine games were breaks. Shnaider said afterward that it takes a few games against another lefty to get used to the spin and find the other player’s strengths.

The second set opened with six games in a row won by the returner. Eala held for the first time at 3-3 and led 4-3. In the next game she had a chance to break for 5-3 and could not take it. Shnaider held, broke her the next game on a long forehand, and served for the match. Eala saved the third match point with a drop shot followed by a passing shot. She also earned two break points of her own in that game and missed the return both times.

“You Lose Almost Every Single Week”

On Maria Sharapova’s podcast, released October 7, Eala said: “Tennis is such a humbling sport. You lose almost every single week.” In the same episode she said she had spent years unlearning the habit of tying results to self-worth. “I felt that for a long time that if I wasn’t doing well, my self-confidence and my self-worth and how I’d look at myself would change in a negative way,” she said. “So those have to be separate.”

In a 32-player draw, only the champion finishes without a loss. Eala is 34-23 in tour-level matches this year.

What It Pays

Reaching the round of 16 earned Eala $17,795, about ₱1.1 million. That puts her 2026 prize money just over $2 million. By the tour’s tally, her career earnings before this year were about $1.36 million. The champion in Tokyo next week earns $185,500.

Tokyo, Unseeded Again

The Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, the tour’s last WTA 500 event of the season, runs October 26 to November 1. It has a 28-player draw with eight seeds. Only the top four get a first-round bye, so seeds five through eight play in round one. Eala is outside the eight seeds again, so she can meet a seed immediately. Shnaider is on the entry list, though she may rest after Ningbo. The Hong Kong Open, a WTA 250, follows from November 2 to 8. Eala and Shnaider are both entered there too.