We're down to the final eight at the BNB Ningbo Open, the second-to-last WTA 500 tournament of the season.
The top half of the quarterfinals is loaded, with World No. 1 Elena Rybakina and Top 15 players Iva Jovic and Diana Shnaider. Unlikely qualifier Katarzyna Kawa is the outlier.
There are no seeds remaining in the bottom half, though all four players are WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz champions, primed to make a late push for a title as the season nears its conclusion.
Here's everything you need to know about the quarterfinal matchups in Ningbo.
[1] Elena Rybakina vs. [Q] Katarzyna Kawa
First career meeting
The top seed and defending champion has played just 30 minutes to get to the quarterfinals. Rybakina led Polina Kudermetova 5-0 in the first when the latter decided to call it quits with a right shoulder injury. She'll face an unlikely test in World No. 128 Katarzyna Kawa, who picked up the biggest win of her life over 14th-seeded Belinda Bencic 7-5, 6-2. Kawa made her WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz debut in 2010, and 16 years later, this is her first career Top 20 win.
Unlike Rybakina, who hasn't even played a completed set in Ningbo, the 33-year-old Kawa has won four matches this week. Her first two, against Katie Volynets and Daria Snigur, were second-set walkovers in qualifying. She then played Snigur, a lucky loser, again in the first round, coming from behind to win 1-6, 6-2, 6-4.
Rybakina will be the ultimate challenge for Kawa, but she's relishing the opportunity.
"I don't really have expectations," she said after beating Bencic. "This was my biggest win of my whole career so far in singles, so I'm just incredibly excited for this tournament and my next match. Let's see how it goes. I hope it goes well."
[4] Iva Jovic vs. [6] Diana Shnaider
Jovic leads the head-to-head 1-0
Shnaider has yet to drop a set this week, but it's been anything but easy for the World No. 13. She saved five set points across both sets in her 7-5, 7-6 (4) win over Yulia Putintseva, and it took seven match points to beat Alexandra Eala 7-5, 6-4 in the second round. But Shnaider just knows how to win here -- she made the final in her debut back in 2023 and reached the semis last year, and is now 9-3 at this tournament.
She'll play Jovic, who beat Jasmine Paolini 6-4, 6-3 in the second round. Jovic is now into her seventh quarterfinal of the season, and she's been rock solid at this stage of tournaments, winning five of six matches to advance to the semifinals.Â
In their lone meeting in Dubai earlier this year, Jovic beat Shnaider 6-4, 1-6, 6-0.
Leylah Fernandez vs. Ekaterina Alexandrova
Alexandrova leads the head-to-head 3-2
Fernandez has spent nearly six hours on court through her first two matches, coming from behind to upset seventh-seeded Elise Mertens 7-5 in the third and then needing more than three hours to top qualifier Aliaksandra Sasnovich. That's in stark contrast to Alexandrova, who breezed past Guo Hanyu and then advanced to the quarters when Marta Kostyuk retired after their first set. She's now won five of her last six matches in Ningbo after reaching last year's final.
Fernandez and Alexandrova know each others' games very well. They most recently met in Wuhan last week, a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 win for Fernandez. The Canadian was far steadier in that one, hitting eight aces and 25 winners to 20 unforced errors. Alexandrova, by comparison, had 47 unforced errors and nine double faults, and Fernandez created 19 break points. (She converted just five.)
Their last three matches have gone the distance.Â
Sara Bejlek vs. Marie Bouzkova
First career meeting
This is a fun first-time meeting between a pair of talented Czechs and Billie Jean King Cup teammates.
Making her Ningbo debut, Bejlek came from a set down to beat Alycia Parks 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the first round, and then upset eighth-seeded Sorana Cirstea in the round of 16. Though that win was in straights, the 20-year-old had to dig herself out of a hole, saving two set points down 6-5 in the first. She took the tiebreak and then won the second set 6-4, advancing to her sixth quarterfinal of the season.
Bouzkova, who's won a pair of WTA 250 titles this season on two different surfaces, in Bogota and Nottingham, beat Kamilla Rakhimova in her first-round match. She was slated to play second-seeded Iga Swiatek next, but caught a break when Swiatek decided to pull out. She instead played lucky loser Anastasia Zakharova, coming from 5-2 down and saving four set points to win 7-5, 6-2.
