By Martyn Herman
LONDON, July 8 (Reuters) – Britain’s Arthur Fery became only the fourth wildcard to reach the men’s singles semi-finals at a Grand Slam as his dream Wimbledon run continued with a 6-4 7-6(4) 6-0 victory over Italian ninth seed Flavio Cobolli on Wednesday.
Born in France to French parents but having grown up five minutes from the All England Club, Fery entered Wimbledon ranked 114th in the world and largely unknown to the wider British public but his exploits have captivated the nation.
French Open runner-up Cobolli was the highest-ranked player the 23-year-old Fery has faced but on a sweltering Centre Court he produced another fearless performance.
His victory means he is only the fifth British man in the professional era to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals, joining Andy Murray, Tim Henman, Roger Taylor and Cameron Norrie.
Cobolli had the first chance of the match but failed to convert a break point at 3-3 in the first set and the Italian wavered when serving at 4-5, double-faulting and then missing a forehand wide to pass up the opening set.
Fery recovered from dropping serve early in the second set and then controlled the tiebreak to put one foot in the semi-finals as errors flowed off the Cobolli racket.
With 14 hours already in his legs just to reach the quarter-finals, including marathon five-set victories in both the previous rounds, Fery showed no sign of fatigue in the searing heat as he broke Cobolli’s serve at the start of the third.
Fery showed incredible resilience to fight off break points in the next game and that proved to be Cobolli’s final resistance as the Italian cracked under the relentless intensity of the British player.
He closed out the win with an ace to become the lowest-ranked player to reach the men’s semi-finals at Wimbledon since 125th ranked Goran Ivanisevic memorably won the title in 2001.
The only other men’s wildcards to reach Grand Slam semi-finals are Jimmy Connors at the 1991 U.S. Open and Henri Leconte at the 1992 French Open.
(Reporting by Martyn Herman, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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