2026 Wimbledon Round 1 Recap, Sinner Survives Scare, Shelton Stunned | Something Major | EP 189

**Sam** (0:00)
All right, everyone, on this episode of Something Major, we'll be recapping Wimbledon Round 1 Let's go. Jack, John, Stevie and Sam, got close a few times, never wanna slam, Nothing Major. All right, we're back. We're all over the place right now. Stevie's in Hawaii, John is in Wyoming, I am in London, we got Charlie Fox, a team at SIFT here.
Round 1 of Wimbledon is in the books, but before we get to that, quick shout out, Stevie, your boy, Davidovich Folkina, finally got a title last week in Mallorca.

**Stevie** (0:35)
He's done it, he has done it. Finally, the monkey is off the back. Too bad it had to come at the expense of our boy, Ethan Quinn, but it was only a matter of time before Davidovich Folkina got himself a title. Kind of like a subdued celebration. I thought there'd be a little bit more excitement for some reason. I think it was just more relief than anything, but congrats to him, he finally got it. It was too good to not have a title, and especially to do it on home soil in Mallorca. I mean, relatively home soil.
It's gotta be exciting. So bummer for Ethan, but ultimately Davidovich Folkina, I think is now not the best player to not have a title to his credit.

**Sam** (1:14)
Exactly, he's got that monkey off his back. So good for him.

**Stevie** (1:17)
Yeah.

**Sam** (1:18)
All right guys, we're also excited. We've partnered with IBM for Something Major, but IBM has been a long standing partner of Wimbledon for over 35 years. You know that Wimbledon app that you go on, it's like the best app, that is powered by IBM. I actually did like a behind the scenes with IBM today. We went down, they call it Court 19, which there was not actually Court 19 at Wimbledon. It's this bunker area where the control center is. They're probably using a bunch of those crazy chips that we hear about.
All the information from IBM goes into that center and then is dispersed out to the world. We're so used to, especially when we play, go back 15 years ago.
You could look at first serve percentage, breakpoints converted, basic things.
Let everyone know, Watson X, what are the things that we can see on that app now that we didn't see maybe 15 years ago?

**Stevie** (2:09)
You can see just about anything that might perk your interest, right? You're not a big numbers guy, Sam, but I think you've really grown to this app. You're not a big analytics guy during your career, but I think now as an analyst, as we all are, I think it's super exciting to look at the numbers, the likelihood percentages, where they serve, how they serve, points they win, length of points, where they're successful in the numbers, and everything that goes beyond that. You can see the errors, the winners, where they're struggling on certain days. But it's phenomenal just to get that many numbers.

**Sam** (2:43)
Yeah. You're a numbers guy, Watson X, three main things they do.

**John** (2:46)
Big numbers guy, Stevie.

**Sam** (2:47)
Big numbers guy, Stevie J.

**John** (2:49)
Big numbers guy.

**Sam** (2:50)
Watson X, it's got an AI assist chat. So you can go in there as a fan and ask you questions, and it will answer the questions for you. It also has live likelihood to win. That's my favorite one. Like before the Serena Williams match, you can, there's a little circle in there. You open it up and it's like Serena Williams has a 61 percent chance to win this match before it begins. And that moves while the match is going on based on the score. That's always really cool. And then highlights and the highlights aren't just highlights.
They explain like the key turning points in the match. So all right, we get a big backhand down the line. But like, why was that a key turning point in the match? Why did this happen? So that's Watson X. Those three features are huge and really important and really cool and really unique to the IBM Wimbledon app.

**Stevie** (3:35)
Yep.

**Sam** (3:35)
Like my favorite part of the Watson X, the three keys is the likelihood to win. And so for Ben Shelton going to the match prior today, he had an 80 percent chance to win this match. Shelton is the four seed. He won Stuttgart, one of the warm up tournaments, played well in Holla.
He's four and oh in five set match. He plays well in Major. So I think going into this match before it started, I think we can all agree that Shelton probably would have been at least an 80 percent likelihood to win. And then of course, things change as this match got underway.