British wildcard Arthur Fery stuns world No 10 to reach Wimbledon semi-final

CENTRE COURT — When you’re 5ft 9in in tennis, you spend a lot of time looking up. When Arthur Fery finally looks down, he will see the whole world at his feet. The new British No 1, as he will be on Monday, is on cloud nine after producing yet another upset, beating world No 10 Flavio Cobolli to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals. Ranked outside the top 100 before the tournament began, Fery needed a wildcard to get into the draw but once he got in, he seized the opportunity with both hands and will face French Open champion Alexander Zverev on Friday for a place in the final. But the 23-year-old has already made history by getting into the Wimbledon last four, one of only five British men to achieve that feat, and only the second man ever to do so as a wildcard. Fery flat on his back on Centre Court after the biggest result of his life (Photo: Reuters) “It gets better and better every match. I just can’t believe it,” Fery said. “Playing on Centre Court for the second time, second win. I just can’t believe it.” He added: “That last game, I felt emotions that I hadn’t experienced before in my life. It’s unbelievable to share it with those guys [his team]. It’s a great bunch of guys. I’m so happy.” It is hard to overstate the precipice on which Fery found himself when walking out onto Centre Court. A man who this time last year was preparing for a second-tier tournament in the leafy suburbs of Detroit was now within touching distance of joining Andy Murray, Tim Henman, Roger Taylor and Cam Norrie in the annals of British tennis as a Wimbledon men’s semi-finalist. Not that you would have known it. His curtain-fringe held back by his white hat and red tennis bag slung over his shoulders, he wandered out onto Centre Court with the air of a man who had just arrived for a casual hit with a friend. Even when the Queen – the actual blooming Queen – had snuck up on him in the corridor backstage and wished him the best of British, he seemed fairly nonplussed. After all, she was here to see him, the legend of King Arthur. It's not every day Her Majesty The Queen sneaks up on you… pic.twitter.com/CRgVG7NUAj— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) July 8, 2026 The ice in his veins was so apparent that it seemed to shift the pressure on to his Italian opponent; Cobolli had relished the “Davis Cup” style atmosphere of his third-round win over Karen Khachanov. But that was 4,000 fans on No 2 Court, split down the middle. This was nearly 15,000 partisan spectators, with only a handful of out-shouted Italians. Of course, this is hardly the Curva Nord of Roma, the club Cobolli played for as a boy as it happens, or the Tribune Sud of Lorient, which Fery’s father owned in Ligue 1 until recently. Supposedly, the decorum of the Wimbledon crowd is unimpeachable. But Cobolli was fuming when a champagne cork went off in his service motion. He lost the point and then double-faulted to offer Fery the first – and as it turned out only – break point of the first set. Cobolli missed, the crowd went wild, and all of sudden it was all aboard the Fery again for the second time this week. The bubble threatened to burst in the second, perhaps an adrenalin dump taking the power from Fery’s legs as he double-faulted en route to an early break of serve, but his fearlessness knows no bounds: he broke back three games later. He needed a tie-break to take the second, but it all fell away from Cobolli after that. The avalanche of momentum was something no one, not least the French Open finalist Cobolli, could stop. Everything went Fery’s way. Even when a ball died off the net in the final game, Fery managed to shove a racket underneath it and bring up match point. No one, not even Cobolli, thought he would blow it.