Alex Eala may have finally found the right tennis again. Now comes the tricky part is making sure it sticks, as she heads into the Toray Pan Pacific Open.

After a frustrating stretch across the Asian swing, the Filipina showed encouraging signs of rediscovering her form at the Ningbo Open, snapping a three-match losing streak with a commanding 6-3, 6-1 victory over world No. 34 Diane Parry before running into world No. 13 Diana Shnaider. Eala ultimately fell 7-5, 6-4 in the Round of 16, but the defeat came with a silver lining: she was once again trading blows with one of the world's best, and she made Shnaider work for every inch.

"[Eala] never goes back down -- she steps in, she rips the ball," the Russian said after their meeting.

It was a concise description of the aggressive baseline tennis that has made the Filipina dangerous against elite opposition, even when the final score has not gone her way. For Eala, the next step is turning those promising stretches into complete performances, particularly when the match reaches its most consequential moments.

That is the version of Eala worth watching in Tokyo, Japan, which runs from October 26 to November 1. The eighth seed enters another WTA 500 event with a chance to build on her progress in Ningbo, where she showed that her game was beginning to click again after early exits in the Singapore Tennis Open and Wuhan Open.

Meanwhile, the draw has a rather amusing way of dangling unfinished business in front of her.

Eala opens against British wildcard Mika Stojsavljevic, a 17-year-old former US Open junior champion. On paper, this is the sort of matchup the Filipina should fancy due to the opponent's WTA ranking of 308. But after her recent losses to lower-ranked opponents, the opening round is less a routine appointment than a chance to establish that the Ningbo reset was real.

The world no. 20 must take charge of baseline exchanges early, use her left-handed forehand to stretch the court and avoid allowing a dangerous underdog to hang around long enough to make things uncomfortable.

Win that, and the next hurdle could be Australian Talia Gibson or a qualifier. Gibson is a familiar name from Eala's earlier ITF days, with the Filipina holding a 2-0 advantage in their head-to-head matchups.

Then comes the potential rematch with Shnaider. The third seed occupies Eala's projected quarterfinal path, setting up the possibility of a quick reunion with the Russian who ended her Ningbo campaign.

Shnaider has already shown she can handle the Filipina's pace and left-handed patterns with a total of six breaks in their recent matchup, but Eala was close enough to make a second meeting intriguing. The difference could come down to the small stuff: how effectively she protects her second serve, whether she can redirect Shnaider's pace without surrendering court position, and how she handles the pressure points that swung their first encounter.

The other half is headlined by top seed Elena Rybakina, with Belinda Bencic and Elise Mertens among the other major contenders.

For Eala, Tokyo is less about chasing another headline win than proving she can sustain the level of tennis that makes those wins possible. Ningbo showed that her aggressive baseline game can still trouble the world's best; now she needs to pair that shot-making with steadier serving, cleaner execution and a sharper touch on the biggest points if she aims to finally build momentum in the Asian swing.