The Spanish woman is going to be surprising in this match

Katie Volynets made some noise this week in Nottingham. Birrell in qualifying, Kessler in the first round, the defending champion taken out decisively 6–3 6–3. Impressive on paper. But digging a bit deeper, that list of scalps needs to be put into perspective: Birrell came in cold, Kessler had been in crisis for several weeks and hadn’t won a single match on grass in 2026 before getting here. Volynets didn’t beat in-form players, she beat broken ones. And her structural record on grass, across her whole WTA career, is still heavily negative. The momentum is real, but it’s been built on sand.

On the other side, Jéssica Bouzas Maneiro, right-handed, 23 years old, WTA No. 55, is a player who has shown on the grass of the big tournaments that she knows how to exist there. R16 at Wimbledon 2025, a win over Vondrousova on Centre Court in 2024, a positive WTA grass record over the last 52 weeks. She comes in with a heavy game, balls with a lot of topspin that bounce high even on grass and break the rhythm of players who want to hit clean and flat like Volynets. She dominated their only meeting 6–2 6–4 in Osaka last year, and nothing in the American’s tactical profile suggests she’ll handle this kind of game any better on a surface that suits her even less.