However, the Filipina has struggled to continue this form since the US Open<\/a>, with Eala<\/a> winning just three of her seven WTA Tour matches since the last Grand Slam of the year.<\/p>\n Two of Eala’s losses have come against Diana Shnaider<\/a>, including at the Tokyo Open<\/a>, but what has happened since then should provide her with a huge morale boost.<\/p>\n Alex Eala pushed eventual champion Diana Shnaider the most at the Tokyo Open<\/p>\n Eala lost to Shnaider at both the Ningbo Open<\/a> and the Tokyo Open, but their most recent encounter in the Japanese capital was much closer fought as the Russian came from a set down to win 2-6, 7-6(5), 6-4.<\/p>\n Shnaider would go on to win the Tokyo Open title, her first tournament victory of the 2026 season, after beating Leylah Fernandez<\/a> in the final. Eala was not the only player to push Shnaider to three sets, but she was certainly the closest to beating her, having been just two points away from a straight sets win.<\/p>\n This should be hugely encouraging for Eala, not only because she had been through a run of relatively disappointing results, but also because she closed the gap on Shnaider.<\/p>\n It goes to show the margins between a player losing in the quarter-finals and another winning the title, showing that the Tokyo Open was definitely Eala’s best tournament since the US Open.<\/p>\n Tokyo Open 2026<\/p>\n Diana Shnaider’s result<\/p>\n First Round<\/p>\n Received a bye as the third seed<\/p>\n Second Round<\/p>\n Shnaider beat Aliaksandra Sasnovich (Q), 6-3 5-7 6-3<\/p>\n Quarter-final<\/p>\n Shnaider beat Alex Eala (8), 2-6 7-6(5) 6-4<\/p>\n Semi-final<\/p>\n Shnaider beat Mia Pohankova (WC), 6-4 7-6(7)<\/p>\n Final<\/p>\n Shnaider beat Leylah Fernandez, 6-4 5-7 6-2<\/p>\n Alex Eala’s surprising biggest threat to winning the Hong Kong Open<\/p>\n Eala will now hope to use the form she showed in Tokyo at her final tournament of the 2026 season, which is the Hong Kong Open<\/a>. Eala may be relieved that Shnaider is not in the draw in Hong Kong, but there are still a number of threats to her winning a second WTA title.<\/p>\n Alycia Parks will be Eala’s first round opponent and based on ranking her most likely opponents in the draw are Tereza Valentova<\/a>, Xinyu Wang, Maria Sakkari<\/a> and Sorana Cirstea<\/a>. Other than Sakkari, who she has never played before, Eala has played at least two matches against all of these players before.<\/p>\n Eala has 1-1 head-to-heads against Parks, Wang and Cirstea, but won their most recent meeting, but she has never beaten Valentova before having lost both of their previous meetings at the Japan Open<\/a> in 2025 and the Qatar Open<\/a> in 2026.<\/p>\n Valentova, who is still only 19 years old, enjoyed a breakthrough season last year and was ranked as high as world number 42 in May, but a drop-off in form and injury issues have caused her to fall outside the top 80.<\/p>\n Eala will only play Valentova if she beats Parks in the first round of the Hong Kong Open and the Czech wins her opener against qualifier Himeno Sakatsume.<\/p>\n The main draw of the Hong Kong Open gets underway on Monday, November 2, but Eala and Valentova will not play their first matches until Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Eala has been given some significant encouragement, despite losing in the quarter-finals of the Tokyo Open. Eala…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-821538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/tennishead_808\/9d9b5cc3a280241f36b0995da45630d1.jpg\"\/)
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