Wimbledon - Has Sinner conquered the heat?

**Catherine** (0:11)
Hello, and welcome to The Tennis Podcast, live from Wimbledon, presented by Barclays, the official banking partner of Wimbledon. We are thrilled to have Barclays on board for the duration of the championships and our 18 shows from the championships in 2026 I say live from Wimbledon.
I mean that in the loosest and most spiritual possible sense, because we are neither live nor at Wimbledon.

**David** (0:42)
Not this time.

**Catherine** (0:43)
We will be from tomorrow, folks. Right now, we are all together in the same vicinity. So we've sort of overcome that initial obstacle. We are down the road from Wimbledon at Tennis Podcast Towers, in the Wimbledon area. And we will be in our usual wonderful spot at Wimbledon, on the broadcast roof, overlooking the grounds, caught one in the background, live streamed on YouTube. We will be there from tomorrow. The plan for today was to do this show from Wimbledon Qualifying at Roehampton. None of us made it to Wimbledon Qualifying at Roehampton.
It's, yeah, it's been an eventful start to our 2026 Wimbledon journey, David.

**David** (1:29)
Wasn't our fault, folks. We had all the plans in place. We'd ordered a massive air conditioning unit for this apartment and then it arrived and then it didn't work. And then troubleshooting started and the heat rose outside. We were running out of time and we realized there's no possible way we can make this work. So here we are. Here's plan B.

**Matt** (1:51)
Yeah, we're just sweaty and putney instead.

**Catherine** (1:55)
We were going to be sweaty somewhere and we've decided to be sweaty and putney for tonight. Yeah, it's another Grand Slam where we're talking about the weather, folks. Hopefully, once the tournament gets started, we won't be because this heat wave is scheduled to break.
It's scheduled to break when the new air conditioning unit is now scheduled to arrive, in fact.

**David** (2:14)
It's a long-term investment.

**Catherine** (2:17)
If you are considering a purchase from appliancesdirect.co.uk, I would think very carefully about it, to put it that way.
By Monday, by the time things get under way, we should be in OK shape. But you'll have probably seen, Jannik Sinner has been wearing a cooling vest on the practice courts. You'll have seen the scenes from Roehampton at qualifying the last couple of days. They didn't use ball kids yesterday. They swapped in adult stand-ins because, I mean, it's just not on to have kids out in this weather. It's worse than Paris.
It might say only 34 degrees on the app, but my algorithm is clogged with this content at the moment. It's different here. There's some bubble going on, some meteorological event. There is no air conditioning anywhere. It is disgusting.

**David** (3:16)
It's first code red that I think we've ever had for hot weather, isn't it, in the area, like a public announcement?

**Catherine** (3:22)
Yeah. I mean, the moment that all air conditioning units sold out online was, I think, the moment that I received a BBC News alert on Monday, which included the words risk of death in it. Like, it's a pretty serious situation, like in all of Europe at the moment. And I'm sure a lot of players are very relieved to see that the heat wave will be breaking just as our air conditioning unit arrives. So that's our day, folks. Ninety minutes of troubleshooting. Three, four adults and a dog trying to fix a broken aircon unit. An hour of live chat with the manufacturers and an hour on the phone to the distributors.
But in that time, we were also watching Oliver Tarvet.

**David** (4:14)
Tarvet time.

**Catherine** (4:15)
It is actually David's Tarvet time.

**David** (4:17)
Absolutely. I knew it was coming and here it is. I mean, all joking apart, he is quite a player and he proved it today for the second year in a row, winning three qualifying matches.
And I just feel like he is another example of how qualifying is a really useful journey to go on if you want to make waves in a tournament. I mean, he looks so matched tight. He looked fantastic today.

**Catherine** (4:44)
I had kind of forgotten because Oliver Tarvet became a bit of a bit for us because you signed, you were impressed with him last year when he took on Alcaraz, qualified, won around, took on Carlos Alcaraz on Centre Court.
And became a real tabloids darling story here. And then you signed him to your fantasy team, not realizing that he basically wasn't a professional tennis player and was going to return to UC San Diego for his final year, which is what he's been doing. I had forgotten that it originally became a bit. You wanted to sign him because you were genuinely so impressed with him as a tennis player. Like David really thinks Oliver Tarvet is the business.