Wimbledon found an unlikely hero on Monday in Arthur Fery, a 23-year-old Briton ranked outside the world's top 100, who fought back from two sets down to beat the vastly more experienced Grigor Dimitrov on Centre Court and reach the quarterfinals of his home Grand Slam.
A five-set comeback
Fery lost the second and third sets and looked to be heading out, but recovered to force a decider and edged the final-set tiebreak, closing out a 7-5, 3-6, 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 win over Dimitrov, a former world top-five player, the ATP Tour reported. By NBC Sports' account, the result made him the first British wild card to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal in the professional era, NBC Sports reported.
An unusual path to the last eight
Fery's route into the sport is not the standard one. Raised in London, he took a tennis scholarship to Stanford University in the United States, rising to the top of the American college game before turning professional, the Lawn Tennis Association noted. He comes from a sporting family: his father is the owner of a French football club, and his mother played on the women's professional tour. A wild card into the main draw, he has now strung together the best run of his career on its biggest stage.
What comes next
In the quarterfinals Fery faces the Italian Flavio Cobolli, a seeded player and the favorite, though Fery has beaten him before. Whatever happens next, his run has been a rare bright spot for British tennis at Wimbledon, where home players have often exited early in recent years. For a player who grew up close to the All England Club, reaching its final eight is the kind of week that redraws a career, and for now, he is still in the draw.
