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British wild card Arthur Fery storms into Wimbledon semi-finals
Fery 6-4, 7-6, 6-0 Cobolli
Far-fetched? Freakish? Fantastic? All these terms would apply to the story of Arthur Fery, the unknown British 23-year-old swept past ninth seed Flavio Cobolli to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals.
The word “surreal” was being bandied about early in this tournament when Serena Williams returned from a four-year absence to play singles at the age of 44.
But how much more unimaginable is the sight of Fery’s name on the semi-final line-up alongside Jannik Sinner, Novak Djokovic and Alexander Zverev?
This is a man ranked No 114 in the world. A man who had arrived at Wimbledon with just two best-of-five-set wins on his CV. A man whose only previous encounter with a top-20 opponent had been a first-round beatdown at the hands of Daniil Medvedev at this same event in 2023.
Fery was more used to traversing the second-tier Challenger events of Thailand and South Korea than he was to treading Wimbledon’s hallowed turf. And yet he has carved through the draw, looking so cool and self-assured that you might have thought him a pre-tournament favourite. Not even a pre-match chat with the Queen, who joined the dignitaries at the court of King Arthur, could disturb his flawless concentration.
As it happened, Fery’s previous-best win on ranking had come against Cobolli at January’s Australian Open. But that one had found the Italian in such acute gastric distress that, after missing a forehand on the final point of a lengthy first set, he kept running all the way to the courtside toilet.
This time, Cobolli appeared to be in full health. He was looking to back up the recent run which took him to the final of last month’s French Open, and to bring the “Fery-tale” to a juddering end.
But Cobolli barely got a look in, notably in a third set which saw Fery – the 23-year-old without any tennis pedigree to speak of – hand out a devastating 6-0 beating. By the end, the Centre Court crowd were chanting “Arthur! Arthur!” in the same way that they used to chant “Andy! Andy!” before the Scottish hip exploded. Then, when on-court interviewer Lee McKenzie revealed that Alexander Zverev will be Fery’s next opponent, they booed heartily.
The fans deserve some kind of assist for this win, because Cobolli was clearly not enjoying the partisan atmosphere. He spoke to the umpire a couple of times about noises during the rally, although the explanation lay in over-enthusiasm rather than poor sportsmanship.
And then there was the champagne. Hostile crowds are one thing, but has Cobolli ever been foxed by a popped cork before? Serving at 5-4 in the first set, he went into his ball-toss and had to bail out because of what sounded like a gun going off in the stands. He promptly lost the next three points and with them the set.
After Fery’s last two matches had both found him fighting back from apparently lost causes, he was the front-runner here, despite the massive gap of 104 places on the rankings ladder. His forehand was the dominant shot throughout, as he controlled play and set the tactical template for the match: deep groundstrokes broken up by the occasional drop-shot or net rush.
As for Cobolli, he never found a consistent vein of form. His favourite tactic is to strike inside-out forehands in the Spanish style from his own backhand corner, but Fery rarely gave him the time or space to set this shot up. Even when he did get on the front foot, he was often outfoxed by his opponent’s extraordinary defensive capabilities.
By the third set, Cobolli’s spirit appeared broken, while Fery just kept growing stronger to complete his 7-5, 7-6, 6-0 victory in an economical two hours and 14 minutes. It was his shortest outing of a mind-boggling tournament.
“Maybe I was a little bit nervous,” said Cobolli after the match. “Maybe I felt the pressure that normally I don’t feel. [I was playing] a quarter-final against a guy that already played a marathon match, [spent] many hours on court, ranking lower than me, so I felt like it was a chance to have a good day for me today.
“Maybe, like my team says, I wasn’t so humble since the first point, but I felt that it wasn’t my day. Can happen. Maybe he play better than the other matches. I don’t know. I didn’t see the other one. But I felt that his level is really high today.”
Where do we fit this on the improbability scale? When you consider where he started, Fery’s run feels like the most extraordinary breakthrough story to be seen at Wimbledon this century – and perhaps even since Boris Becker won the title at 17 in 1985.
After last year’s Wimbledon threw up the expected final between Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, the 2026 event has been thrown into chaos by the Fery factor. He is the first male wild card to reach the semi-finals here since Goran Ivanisevic in 2001, and will now climb a remarkable 78 places on the rankings ladder, reaching the giddy heights of No 36 and replacing Cameron Norrie as the British No 1.
A man who has suffered with nosebleeds during this tournament, Fery is now operating in thin and rarefied air. But when asked about playing a semi-final on Friday, he sounded almost blasé. “[I’ll just do] what I’ve tried to do for the past 10 days. Yeah, just believe in myself, do the best I can do every match, give myself 100 per cent, and see then where that will take me.”
As the rest of us grow more and more light-headed, Fery’s sang-froid remains firmly intact.
[Source: Daily Telegraph]
