Even on Centre Court and the hallowed grass where silence is usually preserved, Arthur Fery refused to go down quietly. The last British hope left standing in the singles, and Wimbledon local, was not done with his fairytale. Kicking and screaming in defiance, he won a five-set thriller against fellow wildcard Grigor Dimitrov to reach the quarter-finals. Roger Federer looked down from the front row of the Royal Box and grinned in approval at Fery’s fight and the arrival of a new home hope. The days of five-set epics involving a roaring, snarling Brit following Andy Murray’s retirement are not over, after all.
Instead, the 23-year-old Fery once again fought back from the brink, battling from a break down in the fourth and prevailing in a match tiebreak to end the resurgence of Dimitrov, winning 7-5 3-6 4-6 6-4 7-6 (7) in three hours and 55 minutes. It has already been a life-changing fortnight for Fery, born to French parents but who grew up five minutes down the road from the gates of the All England Club; the late bloomer who stayed in school and studied at Stanford in California, patiently waiting for his moment. As the light faded on a rapturous Centre Court, at 8:21pm on Monday evening, Fery gloriously burst through and seized it.
