British wildcard Arthur Fery continued his fairytale run at Wimbledon after beating Flavio Cobolli to reach the semifinals.
Fery, ranked 114th in the world, defeated ninth seed Cobolli in straight sets, 6-4, 7-6, 6-0, to become the first wildcard to reach the final four in men’s singles at a Grand Slam since Goran Ivanisevic in 2001.
The home hope earned his first straight-sets win of the tournament and will now take on world number three Alexander Zverev for a place in the Wimbledon final.
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With his remarkable triumph over the Italian, 23-year-old Fery has just joined an exclusive club of British players.
Arthur Fery makes history at Wimbledon after reaching final four
Fery is now just the fifth Briton in the Open Era to advance to the semifinals in men’s singles at Wimbledon.
He joins Roger Taylor, Tim Henman, Andy Murray and Cam Norrie in the list of players to achieve the feat.
Since the Open Era began in 1968, just one man has managed to get their hands on a Wimbledon singles crown: Murray, who did so on two occasions.
The Scot clinched his first title in SW19 in 2013 after beating Novak Djokovic in the final, and secured his second in 2016; the year he became world number one.
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Norrie made the semifinals at Wimbledon once, Taylor twice, and Henman four times, with the latter doing so in 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2002.
Fery will now look to become the second British man in the Open Era, after Murray, to reach a Wimbledon final.
Arthur Fery’s extraordinary run at Wimbledon so far
Amid a poor first week for Brits at Wimbledon, Fery started his campaign by dropping the first set against Damir Dzumhur in the first round.
He fought back to win in four and did the same in his second-round match with fellow qualifier Otto Virtanen, who had knocked out Ben Shelton.
Fery was already the last British player standing across men’s and women’s singles after the second round, and looked to be on his way out against Zizou Bergs when going two sets to one down in the third round bout.
But once again Fery rallied back and overcame the Belgian in five, winning the last two sets in tiebreaks.
A round of 16 meeting with former world number three Grigor Dimitrov seemed too tall an order for Fery, who made his Centre Court debut against the Bulgarian.
Dimitrov responded to Fery taking the first set by clinching the next two, however, it was not enough to kill the hopes of Fery, who delivered a fourth consecutive comeback to earn the biggest win of his career and advance to the quarterfinals.
Cobolli came into the last-eight matchup with Fery with all the momentum in the world, with the French Open finalist having knocked out fifth seed Alex de Minaur comfortably in the previous round.
That did not seem to faze Fery, though, and the crowd favourite delivered an astonishing level of tennis, earning a third-set bagel against Cobolli to continue a historic run at the Championships.
Fery’s next opponent, Zverev, also broke new ground at Wimbledon by reaching his first semifinal at the event with a win over Taylor Fritz.
The winner between Fery and Zverev will go on to face either Djokovic or defending champion Jannik Sinner in the title bout.
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