London: The British newspapers were full of doom and gloom after the opening days of Wimbledon.
Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu withdrew before playing a match. All 10 Brits who played on day one lost. Only four of the 19 locals who started the tournament made it out of the first round.
“Is this the worst-ever start to Wimbledon for Britons?” was the headline of one BBC story. Judy Murray even launched a scathing attack on tennis officials over the dire state of the sport in Great Britain.
But they did not count on Arthur Fery, the diminutive underdog who grew up around the corner from the All England club, and whose millionaire father, Loic, is the president and ex-owner of French Ligue 1 football club Lorient.
The world No.114 needed a wildcard to make the main draw, and was down and out several times in both his third- and fourth-round matches before outlasting Zizou Bergs then Grigor Dimitrov.
Now, Fery is into the semi-finals, upsetting Alex de Minaur’s conqueror, top-10 Italian Flavio Cobolli, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4), 6-0, on an electrified centre court to become just the second wildcard in tournament history to do so.
The other? Croatian great Goran Ivanisevic, who beat Australia’s Pat Rafter in the 2001 title match. Fery is also the first Briton to make the last four since Cameron Norrie in 2022 and the fifth man in the open era, including Roger Taylor, Tim Henman and Andy Murray.
The straight-sets victory followed Fery’s energy-sapping five-setters in each of the previous two rounds and has propelled him to No.36 in the live rankings.
This latest one ended in a relative hurry, complete in only two hours and 13 minutes, backing up his straight-sets demolition of Cobolli in the opening round at this year’s Australian Open.
“I just can’t believe it,” Fery repeated several times. “That last game, I felt emotions that I hadn’t experienced before in my life.”
The charismatic Cobolli is one of the tour’s most popular players, but he might as well have been playing Roger Federer on Wednesday.
There was only one man the crowd wanted to win, and the roar was deafening as it became obvious what Fery was about to do. Even Queen Camilla, seated in the front row of the Royal Box, could not wipe the smile off her face.
The 23-year-old fell on his back on the famous court after firing an ace past Cobolli on match point to seal a semi-final clash with Germany’s No.2 seed Alexander Zverev.
Roland-Garros champion Zverev snapped a seven-match losing streak to American Taylor Fritz, reaching the last four at Wimbledon for the first time with a 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 triumph.
“I’m happy to be in the semi-finals, for sure, especially against someone like Taylor, who I’ve struggled with over the past two years,” Zverev said. “It’s been a pretty one-sided tennis match that always went his way. I’m very pleased with how I played.”
But this day belonged to Fery.
After Cobolli wasted the first break point of the match with a rush-of-blood forehand that ballooned long, he also gifted Fery the opening set with a double fault then a wayward forehand on consecutive points.
Cobolli was unusually sloppy, leaking 41 unforced errors for the match – almost double as many winners as he managed.
Order seemed to be restored when Cobolli ran Fery ragged with a pair of forehands that forced an error out of the Brit as he dropped serve to love to open the second set.
However, two of the characteristics of Fery’s incredible fortnight have been his mental strength and fighting spirit. With Cobolli serving for a 3-1 lead, Fery bit back with a vengeance, striking an inside-out forehand winner to draw level and send the crowd into raptures.
Neither player faced another break point before the second-set tiebreak, but Cobolli was the one under greater duress to make it there.
Fery thumped an ace on the first point, then forced another mistake out of the Italian on the second point. He never trailed again, and always had an answer as Cobolli’s typically upbeat nature became sullen.
Cobolli dropped serve immediately in the third set, but staged one last attempt to gain a foothold in the match. He did a lot wrong against Fery, but his biggest headache was his opponent.
Twice, Cobolli brought up break-back points, and each time Fery produced magnificent points to stave them off. Fery’s escape in that game seemed to stamp out the last bit of hope in the Italian, whose resistance waned the longer the match went.
“I think that I didn’t play good since the first point of the match,” Cobolli said. “Maybe, I was a little bit nervous. Maybe, I felt the pressure that normally, I don’t feel.”
Earlier, No.9 seed Linda Noskova kept alive the chance of an all-Czech women’s final with a 6-3, 7-5 defeat of Belgian Elise Mertens, after countrywoman Karolina Muchova won through to the semi-finals a day earlier.
Noskova, 21, is the youngest first-time semi-finalist at the All England club since fellow Czech star and two-time Wimbledon winner Petra Kvitova in 2010.
Muchova has American dual grand slam champion Coco Gauff in her way, while Noskova’s semi-final opponent is red-hot Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk, who breezed past Italy’s Jasmine Paolini, 6-3, 6-2.
“I would love to follow in [Kvitova’s] footsteps,” Noskova said.
“The Czech tennis female players have always been incredible. If you look at 10 years back, 20, 30, there’s always been someone … for me, it has always been the fact that us, as such a small country, we can definitely do big things in the world if we look up to the people who did it [before us].”
Marc McGowan travelled to London with Tennis Australia’s support.
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