Diana Shnaider won her first WTA Tour title of the year after staving off a stellar comeback from Leylah Fernandez in the Pan Pacific Open final.

The final looked like a foregone conclusion when third seed Shnaider raced to a 6-4, 4-0 lead in Tokyo on Sunday, but Fernandez had other ideas.

The 24-year-old won seven of the next eight games and took the contest into a decider. The momentum seemed to be with the Canadian, who earned three break points early in the third set.

But the Russian regained her composure, held serve and pulled away to secure a 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 victory in two hours and 18 minutes; in what was her sixth WTA title of her career.

In her on-court interview, Shnaider said, “Firstly, I would like to congratulate Leylah on an amazing week, last week, some great achievements through this Asia Swing. Congrats to you, your coach, and your family back home. Keep going and for sure hope to see you more in the finals like this in the future.”

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Prior to that, Fernandez thanked the tournament organisers, the fans, her coach Eric Hechtman, and congratulated Shnaider on her triumph, which saw her rise back to a career-high ranking of 11.

“First of all I would like to congratulate Diana. An amazing week, a great match. Congratulations to you and your team. Hopefully we can have many more battles like this one,” she said.

“Second, I would like to thank my coach Eric, who is here. Thank you so much for being here this week and last. We just got to keep going. I want to thank my team who are back home watching. Without your guys’ support this wouldn’t be possible so thank you for always believing in me.”

Fernandez has enjoyed a successful Asian Swing, winning the Singapore Open and finishing runner-up in Ningbo last week and Tokyo on Sunday.

The former US Open finalist started this week in 23rd in the rankings but is up four spots to 19th. If she had won the title, Fernandez would have jumped to 16th – just three spots off her career-high.

As it is, she ends this week on 2,201 points after collecting an extra 325 points whereas Shnaider pockets 500 points of her own and is up two spots from 13th. That puts her on 3,238, just under 700 points off a top 10 spot.

For her title triumph, Shnaider has earned £138,396 and Fernandez has added £85,425 to her prize money for the year. The Canada star may yet rise the rankings again as she is scheduled to play at the WTA 250 event in Hong Kong this coming week.