The 51st edition of the WTA Eastbourne Open gets underway on Monday at the Devonshire Park Lawn Tennis Club with seven matches scheduled for the first day. Four of those encounters are examined in this piece–all of them meetings for the first time on tour, including the one between former champion Jelena Ostapenko and home favorite Francesca Jones. Who will make it to the next round?
WTA Eastbourne Day 1 Predictions
Anhelina Kalinina vs Daria Snigur
Head–to–Head: First Meeting
Daria Snigur arrives at Eastbourne’s main draw in arguably the sharpest form of her grass-court career, having already battled through two qualifying rounds at Devonshire Park, beating Sofia Kenin and Petra Marcinko without dropping a set, a run that speaks to genuine comfort on the surface rather than routine wins.
Anhelina Kalinina is a tricky, flat-hitting opponent who has shown flashes of brilliance this season, including a run to the Rabat final, but fitness clouds her outlook.
With Snigur’s serve firing and her counterpunching game increasingly at home on fast courts, expect the younger Ukrainian to control the baseline exchanges and close this out comfortably.
Prediction: Snigur in 2
Petra Marcinko vs Antonia Ruzic
Head–to–Head: First Meeting
Antonia Ruzic enters this one in better form, winning four of her last six matches on grass, although she lost at the first hurdle in Nottingham last week. Her opponent, Petra Marcinko, comes into the draw as a lucky loser despite already having a WTA title in Rabat in her 2026 column and a career-high ranking of No. 50, reached just two weeks ago. That being said, she carries the weight of a patchy 3-5 grass-court record.
In that context, expect the older, more experienced Croatian on the surface to control the tempo from the baseline and march into the next round with relative ease.
Prediction: Ruzic in 2
Tereza Valentova vs Hannah Klugman
Head–to–Head: First Meeting
Tereza Valentova carries the ranking advantage at No. 63 and the recent résumé to match it, but grass is the one surface where the Czech teenager’s credentials thin out considerably. She has played just six professional matches on grass at lower levels, making this Eastbourne outing her first proper WTA main draw test on the surface.
Klugman, by contrast, is riding a bit of momentum that feels tailor-made for this moment: the 17-year-old wild card just claimed her first WTA Tour-level win at Nottingham, a composed 6-2 6-4 dismissal of Harriet Dart, and she now arrives in Eastbourne with the crowd, the surface, and the confidence all pointing in the same direction. She was also awarded a Wimbledon wild card, meaning she has nothing to lose and everything to play for.
Valentova may be the better player in the abstract and should not be underestimated as a competitor, but with minimal grass experience and Klugman surfing the kind of breakthrough energy that is hard to bottle, expect the home wild card to take this one.
Prediction: Klugman in 2
Jelena Ostapenko vs Francesca Jones
Head–to–Head: First Meeting
Francesca Jones gets the dream-home crowd draw, but arguably the nightmare opponent: third seed and former Eastbourne champion Jelena Ostapenko, a player whose flat, laser-flat ball-striking was practically engineered for grass. The intriguing subplot, though, is surface readiness: Ostapenko plays her first taste of grass-court action this season, while Jones, though winless since Roland Garros, has already logged competitive matches on the turf.
On paper, Ostapenko’s power game and proven grass-court pedigree make her the heavy favourite, and a fired-up Latvian finding her range early would end this quickly, but if Jones can disrupt rhythm in the opening set and feed off the crowd, the match becomes far less predictable than the seedings suggest. Still, this one is on the Latvian’s racquet.
Prediction: Ostapenko in 2
Main Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
