No. 6 seed Diana Shnaider returned to the BNB Ningbo Open quarterfinals for a third time in four appearances with a 7-5, 6-4 defeat of Alexandra Eala, closing out the win on her seventh match point after 1 hour and 55 minutes.

The pair are two of the three highest-ranked left-handers on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes Benz -- freshly-crowned Wuhan champion Maja Chwalinska leads the way at No. 11, followed by Shnaider at No. 13 and then Eala at No. 20. While left-handers often enjoy an advantage against many right-handed players, Shnaider revealed that on the relatively rare occasions that they play each other, it's still a tricky matchup.

"You expect the slice serve into the body, definitely a little more variation and a different type of ball strike," she explained in her on-court interview.

"You just gotta get used to the ball -- I guess the first few games you just get used to the spin, where are her strengths, what is her weakness. You just gotta give yourself a little more time to adjust, then it becomes a bit easier as the games go on."

So far, Shnaider has proved more adept at adjusting to her fellow left-handers -- Thursday's result improved her tour-level record in such matches to 11-9, while Eala dropped to 1-4.

It was a first encounter at professional level between the pair -- Eala won their only junior encounter 6-1, 6-3 in the third round of the 2019 Osaka JA event -- and comprised two contrasting, but equally tightly-contested, sets.

The first eight games were dominated by the server, with both players executing aggressive patterns efficiently behind their deliveries. Eala blinked first, sending a forehand sitter wide to drop serve for the first time at 4-4 -- a game that tilted the dynamic of the match in the opposite direction. From 4-4, eight of the next nine games were breaks of serve (the exception came as Shnaider managed to serve out the opening set on her second attempt).

Both players had tallied positive ratios of winners to unforced errors in the opener, with Shnaider delivering more impressive numbers on both counts (16 winners to Eala's 13; only seven unforced errors to the Filipina's 11). That was also reversed in the second set, in which Shnaider's 13 winners were outweighed by 16 unforced errors and Eala's 11 winners by 19 unforced errors.

At 3-3, Eala saved two break points to struggle to the first hold of the set, only to miss a chance to break for 5-3 as Shnaider matched her in the very next game. Shnaider broke again as Eala sent a forehand long to move within a game of victory, but had to survive a testing seven-deuce examination before getting over the line.

After a season-long race, the world's top players converge in the California desert with the WTA's biggest title still to be won.

With her back to the wall, Eala found some of her best tennis of the set, particularly an audacious drop shot-pass combination to save the third match point against her. But she was unable to make her returns on either of her two break points -- missing a putative winner by inches on the first -- or when facing a seventh match point.

Shnaider, who nad needed to save five set points across both sets of her 7-5, 7-6(4), first-round win over Yulia Putintseva, was relieved to have come through another tight contest.

"[Eala] never goes back down -- she steps in, she rips the ball," she said. "Definitely much better than my previous match."

The 2023 Ningbo runner-up to Ons Jabeur and a semifinalist in 2025, Shnaider will bid to extend her strong tournament record against No. 4 seed Iva Jovic in the quarterfinals. The pair have only met once before, with Jovic winning 6-4, 1-6, 6-0 in this year's Dubai second round.