Brit Arthur Fery into semi-finals after upset over Italian Flavio Cobolli
London: Following the opening days of Wimbledon, British newspapers were full of doom and gloom.
Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu withdrew before playing the match. All 10 Englishmen who played on the first day 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 the Brits?” was the title of a 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 trust Arthur Fery, the diminutive underdog who grew up just around the corner from the All England club and whose millionaire father, Loic, is chairman and former owner of French Ligue 1 football club Lorient.
The World No.114 needed a wildcard to make the main draw and was beaten and eliminated several times in both his third and fourth round matches before edging out Zizou Bergs and then Grigor Dimitrov.
Fery has now advanced to the semi-finals, where electric midfielder Alex de Minaur’s winner defeated top-10 Italian Flavio Cobolli 6-4, 7-6 (7-4), 6-0, becoming the second wild card in the tournament’s history to do so.
The other one? Croatian great Goran Ivanisevic defeated Australian Pat Rafter in the 2001 title match. Fery is also the first Briton to reach 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-set victory came after Fery’s energy-sapping five-setter in each of the previous two rounds, moving him to 36th in the live rankings.
This last one was finished in relative haste, finishing in just two hours and 13 minutes and backing him to demolish Cobolli in straight sets in the opening round of this year’s Australian Open.
“I can’t believe it,” Fery repeated several times. “In the last match, I felt emotions that I have never experienced before in my life.”
The charismatic Cobolli is one of the most popular players on the tour but could also play Roger Federer on Wednesday.
There was only one man the crowd wanted to win, and the roar was deafening as it became clear what Fery was about to do. Even Queen Camilla, sitting in the front row of the Royal Box, couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.
The 23-year-old fell flat on his back on the famous pitch after firing an ace to Cobolli on match point to seal his semi-final clash with Germany’s No. 2 seed Alexander Zverev.
Roland-Garros champion Zverev ended his 7-match losing streak against American Taylor Fritz and reached the last four for the first time at Wimbledon with sets 6-4, 6-4, 6-2.
“Of course I’m happy to be in the semi-finals, especially against someone like Taylor, with whom I have been fighting for the last two years,” Zverev said. he said. “It was a pretty one-sided tennis match that always went well. I’m very happy with the way I played.”
But this day belonged to Fery.
After wasting the first break point of the match with a bloody forehand that went long, Cobolli gifted Fery the opening set with a double fault followed by a reverse forehand on consecutive points.
Cobolli was unusually sloppy, leaking 41 unforced errors for the match; This was almost twice the number of wins he had.
Order appeared to be restored when Cobolli put Fery to work miserably with a pair of forehands that forced the Englishman into an error as he dropped love serve to open the second set.
But two hallmarks of Fery’s incredible two weeks were his mental strength and fighting spirit. While Cobolli was ahead 3-1, Fery stepped back with a vengeance and drew level with an inside-out forehand, delighting the crowd.
Neither player faced another break point before the second-set tiebreak, but it was Cobolli who was under more pressure to get there.
Fery scored an ace on the first point, then forced the Italian to make another mistake on the second point. He never followed up again and always had an answer when Cobolli’s typically optimistic nature turned sullen.
Cobolli immediately dropped her serve in the third set but made one last attempt to hold on to the match. He made a lot of mistakes against Fery, but his biggest headache was his opponent.
Twice Cobolli brought up retreat points and each time Fery produced spectacular points to fend them off. Fery’s escape in that match seemed to destroy the last shred of hope in the Italian player, whose resistance diminished as the match went on.
“I think I didn’t play well from the first point of the match,” Cobolli said. “Maybe I was a little nervous. Maybe I felt pressure that I don’t normally feel.”
Earlier, 9th seed Linda Noskova kept her chances alive in the Czech women’s final by defeating Belgian Elise Mertens 6-3, 7-5 after countrywoman Karolina Muchova reached the semi-finals the day before.
Noskova, 21, became the youngest player to reach the semi-finals of the All England club for the first time since Czech star and two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova in 2010.
Muchova is ahead of American double grand slam champion Coco Gauff, while Noskova’s opponent in the semifinals is the hot Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk, who beat Italy’s Jasmine Paolini 6-3, 6-2.
“I would love to follow [Kvitova’s] footsteps,” said Noskova.
“Czech female tennis players have always been incredible. If you look back 10 years, 20, 30, there was always someone… for me it’s always been a fact that we, as a small country, can definitely do big things in the world if we look at the people who are doing it.” [before us].”
Marc McGowan traveled to London with the support of Tennis Australia.
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