The TOP Storylines Going Into Wimbledon! Serving Slabs #29

On today's episode of Serving Slabs we talk about the title winners from this past weekend. We break down some news about Wimbledon and we also will talk about our podcast now on the Collect Originals platform and Fnatic Collect app. So we are super pumped to be here guys. This is our first podcast that is going to be on Collect Originals which is a content series coming to the Fanatics Collect app. We're happy to be part of it. Our podcast will still be published through YouTube, Instagram, Spotify and Apple podcasts like normal, but you'll be able to watch it also on the Fanatics Collect app in real time. And we also are going to have a new audience, hopefully finding out about tennis and tennis cards and learning with us. So if you are new here, I want to point out that we did have a really good episode, one that released at the start of 2026 when I started Serving Slabs. Everything you need to know about tennis cards and tennis to follow the tournaments, know what's going on. I highly recommend watching and listening to that episode. You can find that episode, all the platforms I mentioned, I might even rerun that in the future here soon. So you guys can watch it here on the Collect Originals content series. So, so you all know what to do in the tennis car market. So with that being said, we're going to have you guys new content coming today like normal. Let's jump right into it. Title winner from Queen's Club Championship in London, England. We've got Francisco Sorrendolo who took the title being Tommy Paul in a three set match. Biggest title of Serendolo's career, normally known as a clay quarter from Argentina, wins his 500 title on the grass court out there in London. So big win for him. His purple Sapphire first card numbered out of 10 from 2024 was $11 in December. Now it's what, 50 doll. So big sale for him, huge come up for anyone that bought Serendo low at a super cheap price over the winter. Kind of a guy who's inconsistent, goes in spurts of, you know, big quarterfinals results at Miami and Indian Wells last year, then kind of levels off. He lost first round French Open last year, but here he is having a nice breakout this season so far, winning Queens Club. Huge win for him. Next up, another guy who won the biggest title of his career. This is gonna be Francis Tiafo. He won at Hola Open in Germany. That's a huge W for him. He beat Taylor Fritz in the final. He actually was one in seven against Fritz in his career. I Think lost the last six times against him. Haven't won since 2016. It's been forever. Well, guess what, he beat him in straight sets. Fritz has played a ton of matches recently. He just made the final at Stuttgart, so he's probably a little gassed right now coming back from injury. And Tiavo took it in straight sets. Big win for Tiafo. His 2024 top shroom refractor auto number 999 sold for $50 a day before he actually won on the 20th. And that card was $28 in May. So. So big win for Tiafo and has him hopefully, you know, for his sake on the come up this year. He's had kind of a tough last couple of years. No titles for a few years. So it was a big win for him. And honestly pretty crazy too considering his best surface has definitely been hardcore in his career. And you know, he won his biggest title now in grass just like Serendo. So their best surfaces, no big titles. You know, here they are winning some 500s big for them. Next up, Lyndon Oscova won a 500 title as well. Um, she ended up winning the one in Berlin. She played Pula in the final and beat Pula in three sets. Kind of shocked that Pugula lost that to be honest. Noskova, a great player, just entered in a top 10 for the first time in her career. Believe she is 22 years old as well. So really big title for NASCAR. But Pugula just came off of being Sabalenka bageling her in the third set. Huge win for Pegula and then the letdown final. I really thought Pigula was going to win that. But good for Noskova. Her orange rookie auto is just 40 $42 in March up to 115 now in June. So big win for Naskova. And Those are your three 500 level title winners from this past weekend. So next thing coming up here guys, the national is at the end of July. We will be there with the biggest tennis card booth once again this year. Last year we had the most tennis cards in the National. It was crazy. We had big cards, we had affordable cards. This year we'll have a lot of cards that might fit your price range. Either as low as $1 or as high as probably $15,000. At the booth we're wide variety legends, current players, rookies, prospects, great current, like you know, Alcaraz type of players. It's going to be an awesome show. So booth 479 and 580, make sure you guys stop by our booth at the National. You're going to want to be there. We'll be buying and selling and training the whole weekend. A lot of tennis fans will be at our booth as well. So if you want to meet other tennis card collectors, you got to come to the Slap Stocks booth. It's going to be an awesome time. Pretty much everyone at the Slap Stocks booth watches test, loves test, buys and sells tennis. It'll be a very fun time, so cannot wait to see you guys there. All right, Wimbledon coming up soon, end of June into July. The seed lists are locked now between the men's and the women's. Any tournaments happening this week, like Bad Homburg or Eastbourne for the men's, do not factor into where these players will be seated at Wimbledon. So for the men's seeds, this is a huge cutoff here. Because Ben Shelton is number four. That means he gets his own quarter, which means that he won't have to play center until either the semi or the final if they are on opposite sides of the bracket. And the next four out of the top four, Alex Dibenura, Taylor, Fritz Novak and Daniil Medvedev, which means that Novak will either have to play in sinner Zverev's Felix O.J. alassim or Ben Shelton's quarter. He definitely doesn't want to play in Sinners, anyone else's quarter. I definitely think that Djokovic at Minima is making the semifinal, possibly the final. And with that being said, let's look at what this means for the biggest storyline of Wimbledon. It is, is Novak going to get number 25? I think this is his best chance, possibly his last chance to get number 25, because I do think that Alcaraz will be back for the US Open if Alcaraz is even at 90% into the US Open, which we all hope. So I think that, you know, this is probably the last Grand Slam that Novak is not having to go through either or both of Alkers and Sinner to win. Like at the Australian Open, he had to beat Sinner in the semi, which he did do in five sets, had to play Alkers in the final, and he lost in four sets. I think that grass is his best surface. It's going to be his best chance to win because it's going to be less movement that than on the clay or less, I'd say long rallies, long points, you know, faster points. And I definitely think Novak, obviously, with his seven Wimbledon championships is going to. His experience is going to come into play here. I do have a Very strong feeling that he makes the final if he's on the opposite side of center. And even if he gets center in the final, I think he has a good chance to win. I think that everyone's going to be on his side if he is in the final, at least from like a fan perspective. Maybe there'll be some Italians out there in the crowd, but I think that it'd be really historic for him to win number eight. Unless, honestly now I say that I'm thinking about he would end up tying Federer at 8. And you never know. Those, those fans, they love Federer, they might not want Novak to do that. But either way, big, big time opportunity here for Novak. He's not in the top four this time because he got eliminated early at French opening. He only plays a few tournaments a year now. So all of his points were baked in basically throughout all of his semifinal appearances last year at the Grand Slams. So he dropped out of the top four, which means he's going to have to possibly play center before getting to the semifinal. We'll see if it happens. But that for me is the number one storyline at Wimbledon. I think I'd say the second biggest storyline, which is maybe a little bit under the radar for the casual tennis fans, but it's. Is Jack Draper going to come out in a big way at Wimbledon this year? He pretty much has missed every tournament since Wimbledon, Wimbledon last year. He got hurt at Wimbledon, try to come back for the US Open, won a match, actually end up withdrawing from that tournament after winning his first round at the US Open. So I think Jack Draper has a huge opportunity here. I don't think there's anyone standing in his way if he's healthy in this draw outside of center and Novak. So I think if he really is healthy the whole tournament, there's no reason why he shouldn't be getting to the quarterfinals unless he just hasn't had enough matches recently. He's playing Eastbourne right now. This is his first tournament since playing in Barcelona and injuring his knee and then withdrawing from the rest of the clay season. So he's had a lot of practice recently on the grass. Andy Murray is one of his coaches now practicing this grass season. So we'll see. I think that Draper is a huge opportunity to make a big run as long as he stays healthy throughout this tournament. As for the women, the seeds also have come out. This is the first time in a while that features Coco Golf outside the top four. She lost in the round of 32 at the French Open, which means that she lost a lot of points because she won it last year. So she dropped down honestly coming up pretty soon here. Egan, Amanda and Samova are at the same risk that Coco was at. IGA won Wimbledon last year after having barely any good results the past, you know, five years at Wimbledon and now a lot of pressures on IGA to, you know, keep a lot of her points which if she doesn't do, she'll drop as well. Coco is defending nothing. She lost in the first round last year, Wimbledon, so she has a chance to make up a lot of points. Although she's not good on grass at all. I've watched it for many years now. Just the way she plays, it's not suited for grass. So she could have a big out outburst here like eager to last year or breakout I should say. And we'll see how she does. To me, I'm watching Mira Andrea. Whose quarter does she end up in? She's at number five right now on the list. So she's either going to have to play Pula and IGA or Baknor Sabalenka in the quarterfinals to make the semifinals. If the other four win to get to the quarterfinals. And I honestly think coming into this, if Mira has a nice week at Bad Hamburg, which is the first grass tournament of the year for her and IGA as well, we'll learn a lot. Can Mira make another final? Edge's 19 years old, back to back Grand Slam files. It's very possible. Sabalanka or Bakina Pula look pretty good, but then she lost in the final and iga, none of those people. I'm very confident at all. They've all had very shaky results recently. Um, you look at Coco as well? Not really factor on grass. I honestly think that there will be another surprise winner here at Wimbledon. Which brings me to my next point is the biggest news about Wimbledon is Serena Williams is coming back to play singles. She got the last wild card. I'm pretty sure they just left up to her, hey, do you feel good after playing doubles for a few tournaments to come in and play singles? And they kept that wild card for her and if she said yes, they gave it to her no, then they go to probably another British women's player and she said, yeah, so she's playing in the singles draw now really what it comes down to is who is she going to get? She can play anyone in the first round. She could draw Sabalanka, she could draw Rybakina and that would probably be the most watched first round match in Wimbledon, modern era. History possibly. I don't know. That would be insane. And it might happen now. How's she going to look in singles? None of us know. But she have the fitness, you know, to move, move and last for, you know, up to three sets? Maybe she could. Her serve looks amazing in the doubles matches she's played, so she could serve her way to tie breaks, but we'll see how it goes. That brings up the next point. It's been a decade since we've had two of the same winner in Wimbledon. At Wimbledon for the women's, if you look at it, Serena won back to back in 2015, 2016, and since then there's not been a repeat champion, not even back to back, just any of the years. In that time, you got Serena Williams 15 and 16. You got Mugaruza in 2017, you've got Kerber in 2018. Hell up 2019. No tournament in 2020 for Covid. They got Barty in 21 or Bakken in 22. Vondrosova 23, Kricova 24, IGA 25. That is a lot of different winners at Wimbledon and I feel the same thing's going to happen this year. We could get Sablanka to come through and win her first natural surface Grand Slam title. We could have her win her first Wimbledon. Either way, the pressure will be on here because she has struggled at the Grand Slams recently. She's only won one since the start of last year and it was the US Open at the end of last year. She could possibly. If she loses Wimbledon, the pressure is super wrong because this will be two straight years. She goes in the US Open. Need to win the US Open to win a Grand Slam in that season. After being number one for I think it's like 85 consecutive weeks now, so. And that's a huge risk too. If. If robbing is a big tournament, she can end the end at number one. If Rebakkina wins Wimbledon, she will be the number one player in women's tennis by ranking after the tournament. But I'm not really confident in that. She hasn't looked great in the last three tournaments either. So anything can happen. Everything's up for grabs. Men's Wimbledon coming soon. Women's women's Wimbledon coming soon. Awesome summer on the way. If you guys liked what you saw in today's Serving Slabs podcast, more on the way. It will still be on YouTube, Instagram, Spotify and Apple podcasts. But now I'll be debuting on Collect Originals as well. On the fanatics Collect app. If you guys are new here, thanks so much for watching. Make sure you hit that subscribe button. Let me know in the comments if you guys would like to see anything specific in the future. And thanks all again for watching other saving slabs and we'll see you guys in the next one.