Live from Wimbledon preview - Serena steals the show

**Catherine** (0:11)
Hello and welcome to The Tennis Podcast, live from Wimbledon, presented by Barclays, the official banking partner of Wimbledon. This is our official Wimbledon. How many times can I say Wimbledon? This is our official Wimbledon hype show, our final preview before things get going in 15 hours time out there on the grass courts behind us. To help us get hyped, senior Wimbledon staff have plied us with alcohol. I shall name no names, but we are very grateful indeed we have been led astray.
And cheers to Wimbledon 2026, everyone.

**Matt** (0:47)
Cheers, team.

**Catherine** (0:49)
We have a lot to talk about today. We're also going to be joined a little later in the show by Wimbledon tournament director, Jamie Baker.
We booked him in for that interview weeks ago and we always wanted to speak to Jamie because he's always very good value and he's a real straight shooter and a great speaker. But given the protests and all of that, there's quite a lot to get into with him. So he'll be joining us in about half an hour's time. Who knows how many Centacorp coolers will have drunk by that point. So do stay tuned to find out. We had quite a lot of significant media day activity today, even though it wasn't officially media day, because of course Serena came in not on official media day. She doesn't want to come in with a riff-raff. She wants to come in sandwiched between Jack Draper and... Actually, I'm not sure there was anyone before Jack Draper. She wants to be the starter to the Jack Draper main course, apparently.

**David** (1:50)
Well, maybe he was a dessert.

**Matt** (1:52)
I think he was dessert.

**David** (1:52)
He was dessert.

**Catherine** (1:53)
Right. Okay. Yes. There was no starter. Straight into main course. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Maybe a little aperitif. Straight into main course.
Jack Draper dessert. Okay.
Should have workshopped that little analogy before we went live. Anyway, here we are. There we were at 2.3 this afternoon, an entirely full room, a room that had been full for about half an hour of people wanting to get good seats in anticipation of, I mean, the most, in terms of like a scheduled press conference. I know we had that Yannick Sinner one in Paris where there was the stampede to get to the room once he was announced, but in terms of sort of ones you had so much build up to in anticipation of, this was like as event as they come, really, David.

**David** (2:44)
Yeah, particularly here. I think, as you said, that was an incredible one with Yannick Sinner a few weeks back. But yes, this was an event. This was people coming to see Serena again for the first time in a long, long time here, four years. And she's more than tennis. And I think there were people in the room there that aren't here for the tennis necessarily. They were here because it's Serena Williams. And she was, what, 15, 20 minutes late?
It was fine. We knew that was likely to happen. And I mean, what struck me the moment she walked in is just how relaxed she seems. She just wasn't fussed at all by any... I mean, she was just owning it. She's choreographing every move here just with her aura, I believe. And she knows how to be a star. And yeah, it was interesting. It was...
I don't know how revealing it was because I don't know what I'm listening to, really. I don't know how honest she's being.

**Catherine** (3:55)
It all depends how much you take it at face value, right? If you take it at face value, we learned quite a lot. If you take it at face value, we learned that, well, this is how I interpreted it. We learned that the single biggest reason she decided to play singles was FOMO.
Like she said, there's not many people that would have a Wimbledon wild card held for them. And I just thought that's too good an opportunity to pass up. Like I need to do it. I was expecting her to say, when asked directly, what made you go, yes, I'm going to do this? Because she had already said earlier in the press conference that she had a deadline of Monday to decide, and she decided on Sunday. And she said, I left it to them because I wasn't sure. And then she said, I'm still not sure.
So then she was, you know, asked a follow up question about that later on. You know, what made you sure? Or what made you as sure as you were ever going to be? And yeah, she said that kind of like, well, as now or never, I better give it a go or I'll never know what I was missing out on. But I don't know, I thought she might say, because I was playing so damn well, you know, and I'm Serena Williams and I'm hitting it incredibly in practice and it was definitely a pressure reliever, certainly in terms of what to expect from her.