Alex Eala got the rematch she wanted. The ending, however, came sooner than either player planned.

The 21-year-old Filipina tennis star advanced to the Round of 32 at the Cincinnati Open in the early hours of Sunday, Aug. 16 (Manila time), after Elena-Gabriela Ruse, the Romanian she’d lost to in her only previous meeting with the player, retired with an apparent right ankle injury while Eala led 6-1, 3-0.

It was an emphatic start. Eala dropped the opening game, then reeled off nine of the next ten to seize control of the match. Ruse called for a medical timeout after falling behind 3-0 in the second set to have the ankle taped, and play was suspended shortly after for lightning. She retired before it could resume, handing Eala the win 6-1, 3-0 (ret’d).

The result evens their head-to-head at 1-1. Ruse beat Eala in their first meeting, at the 2024 US Open qualifying tournament — a match Eala had led before Ruse rallied to win in three sets. This time, Eala never let her settle into the match at all.

Eala entered Cincinnati as the No. 17 seed with a first-round bye, sending her directly into the Round of 64. It’s the highest seed of her career at the WTA 1000 level — the tier of tournaments just below the four Grand Slams — and the highest ever held by a Filipino player at that level. She arrived off a breakthrough stretch: her first WTA Tour singles title at the Mubadala DC Open in Washington, followed by a run to the Round of 16 at the Canadian Open in Toronto, where Belinda Bencic ended a seven-match winning streak.

The ranking is climbing to match it. Eala hit a career-high No. 18 in the WTA’s live rankings this past week — up from a start-of-year ranking outside the Top 100 — putting her a step from her first-ever WTA 1000 quarterfinal push. Increasingly, that number is becoming background to the more interesting story: Eala isn’t just chasing milestones anymore. She’s arriving at WTA 1000 events seeded, with a bye built in and expectations attached.

Cincinnati is set to test that shift directly. Eala now moves into the Round of 32, where she’ll face No. 9 seed Amanda Anisimova, the American former world No. 3 and two-time Grand Slam finalist who beat Zeynep Sönmez, 6-2, 6-3, to set up the meeting. It’s the pair’s first-ever match. Anisimova is currently ranked No. 10.

That’s a considerably different proposition than the abbreviated meeting with Ruse. The match is scheduled for Monday, Aug. 17, with a place in the Cincinnati Round of 16 on the line.

For Eala, this is increasingly what the next stage of her career looks like: bigger seeds, bigger names on the other side of the net, and less room to sneak up on anyone. Ruse is out. Anisimova is next.