Arthur Fery one win from Wimbledon final after local rise

Arthur Fery will return to Centre Court on Friday, July 11, 2026, at 13:30 BST, one win away from the Wimbledon men’s singles final after a rise that began a little over a mile from the All England Club. The British wild card will face second seed Alexander Zverev in the semi-finals.

Fery first picked up a racket at the Westside Tennis Club when he was four, and his first lesson came from Alison Taylor there. Taylor, who is married to three-time Wimbledon semi-finalist Roger Taylor, said Fery already showed exceptional footwork, balance and touch as a child. His path stayed tied to southwest London: he was born in Sèvres near Paris, moved to London before his first birthday and later attended King’s College School, just a few hundred metres from Centre Court.

His mother, Olivia Féry, played in the 1991 Roland Garros women’s doubles draw and represented Hong Kong in Fed Cup. His father, Loïc Féry, is a French businessman and the president of FC Lorient. Fery trained with Craig Veal and the former ATP player Benoit Foucher, then sent an unsolicited email to Stanford coach Paul Goldstein. He moved to Stanford University in 2020 and became the school’s first nationally ranked No. 1 singles player since Bob Bryan in 1998. After turning professional, he climbed to a career-high ATP singles ranking of No. 114 on June 29, 2026. At Wimbledon this year, he beat Grigor Dimitrov to reach his first quarter-final, then defeated Flavio Cobolli 6-4, 7-6(4), 6-0 in two hours and 15 minutes to reach the last four.

He drew inspiration from Emma Raducanu’s 2021 US Open run, trying to handle each match on its own terms. That made Fery only the second wild card ever to reach the men’s singles semi-finals at Wimbledon, after Goran Ivanisevic in 2001, and the fifth British man in the Open era to make the last four, joining Andy Murray, Tim Henman, Roger Taylor and Cam Norrie.