WTA Weekly: Noskova seals Wimbledon title - first of many Slams? Will Muchova ever win one?

**John Silk** (0:00)
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**John Silk** (0:40)
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**John Silk** (0:53)
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**SPEAKER_2** (1:06)
Well, hello there, and welcome to the Wimbledon WTA Weekly. And one day, my mic will unmute automatically again.

**John Silk** (1:15)
It's not your fault, it annoys the hell out of me. I don't know what's going on. Sometimes it un-mutes, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it does and you think it hasn't, so you are, yeah, you know.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:25)
It hasn't for me for the last few WTA Weekly, so I think it officially hates me. So this is the, you know, clearly I don't do enough live streams. So, yeah, welcome to everyone to, yeah, our kind of review, look back on the women's event at Wimbledon. Hopefully you haven't forgotten that it happened in the midst of the thrilling Sinner's Vero final that happened yesterday.
But-

**John Silk** (2:03)
Are you being sarcastic a bit there? Cause I didn't, was it thrilling?

**SPEAKER_2** (2:08)
Depends on your definition of thrilling.

**John Silk** (2:10)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:11)
Was it close? Yes. Was it great tennis? No.
Good. Yeah.

**John Silk** (2:17)
We're not always on the same page, Nick, but we are there.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:20)
Yeah. That's more what I would go with.
You know, but we're not here to talk about that. We've already done ATP Weekly for that, right?

**John Silk** (2:28)
Yeah. Last night, Amanda and Fogus, yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:31)
So go back and watch Amanda and Fogus if you want to watch that one back. We're going to talk Linda Noskova winning what was actually a thrilling final with Karolina Muchova and winning her first Grand Slam title.
And yeah, there's a couple of different angles to go down with this story, John, for Linda Noskova. Hello, John, by the way, I haven't actually greeted you yet. We got sidetracked by it many times. But yeah, Linda Noskova, Grand Slam champion, and there's many different angles to go on. So I guess my first thought about it, this is gonna be, this question to you, John, is, how surprised at you that this has happened now for Linda Noskova?

**John Silk** (3:30)
Not mega surprised, but also not, so it's not as left field as Vondrousova in 2023, or even Barbora Klachikova in 2024, even though she had won a slam prior to that. And I would even argue, not as left field in my, for my pre-tournament takes, as Igor Sviatnik would have been a year ago, bearing in mind where Igor was at in terms of her form at that point.
So not as left field as that, but she wasn't in the first three or four names on my, but she was in the next group. I think back to the French Open, and there were sort of three or four favorites, and then there was that next group, wasn't there, with Kosciuk and maybe Miro Andreeva was heading that next group, and so on and so forth, and Svitolina as well. It was like a second group of players, and Lina Noskova would have been in that group because she's now a top 10 player. I think she's got a career high after winning Wimbledon as well. She had won Berlin, but we know what winning grass court tournaments prior to the tournament means, as we saw even on the first round of Wimbledon. I think players like Vekic were out, one obviously Queen's and one or two others, although we did end up getting two German grass court tennis winners in the final in the form of Muchova obviously winning Baden-Homburg. So sort of, but you were looking at the draw and I was, once she got Elisei Mertens in the quarters, you're thinking, I think she wins that one. She had Kostryk in the semifinals. I think she wins that one. Both were sort of pre-match calls from my side. I also, and this brings me to the question that I wanted to ask you, Nick, was I did have her as the slight favorite going into the final. Now, I know many people didn't, but no one was like, it's obviously gonna be Muchova, or it's obviously gonna be Noskova. Everyone was like, I think this is gonna happen. I thought that Linda might handle the occasion a bit better, and that did look that way for about an hour and 10 minutes, or a set and three quarters.