This summer, Arthur Fery’s historic Wimbledon run came to an end with a semi-final defeat. But before he had time to dwell on the loss, there was something else on his mind. “I don’t like collecting Grand Slam towels if I’ve won a match. It’s a bad omen,” he tells me. “So at Wimbledon, I didn’t take any until I lost. Then I took two or three.”

The 24-year-old arrived at the planet’s oldest tennis tournament ranked 114th in the world, with just two Grand Slam wins and no five-set victories to his name. He left as British number one – and newly christened “Quadzilla”. “I hadn’t been described as that before, but it means my fitness trainer is doing something right,” he says. “I knew they were solid, but people can have massive quads and not make use of them. I feel like running around the court for five hours counts as a good use for them.”

Fery came closer to victory than any wild-card entry since Goran Ivanišević, who won the men’s singles in 2001. He was actually supposed to spend that fortnight on a lads’ trip to Greece. “There are some messages I can dig up, but obviously they were very happy for me to keep winning,” he says of derailing two of his best mates’ holiday plans. “One of them was flying through London to Greece from New York, but in the end he just stayed in London with me.”

The big moment came when he beat Zizou Bergs in the third round, breaking into the world’s top 100. “That’s when I really felt, deep down, like I was a professional tennis player,” Fery says. It also earned him automatic entry into Grand Slam main draws. “Weirdly, as the stakes got higher, I was sleeping better, almost like I was getting used to the pressure. But maybe it was because I was more tired.”

After two brutal five-set matches, including a win over former world number three Grigor Dimitrov on his Centre Court debut, Fery made surprisingly light work of French Open runner-up Flavio Cobolli. When he beat the ninth seed in straight sets, he became just the fifth British man to reach a Wimbledon semi-final.

Suddenly, he was a big deal. “I was walking to BBC 5 Live and there was a herd of people following me. It was John McEnroe, Tim Henman, Pat Cash and me, with 50 people around us,” he says. “With the sun setting, it felt quite surreal. Like, ‘Wow, these people know me and they genuinely want to speak to me.’”

Away from the crowds, Fery went home for dinner with his family each night and slept in his childhood bed, keeping things “as normal as they could be”. The Centre Court crowd helped, too. “I can think of at least four moments they added a little extra to my performance,” he says. “I wouldn’t have made the semi-finals without the crowd.”

In his biggest moments, Fery found himself trusting his game more. “You won’t miss that really tough ball that you could have missed, and you’ll make the winner that you could have missed,” he says. “That was my inner belief saying, ‘No, I am on par with this opponent and I can beat him.’

“I’ve been telling myself, even if that is the highlight of my career and my one and only big result on a major scale, that’s already better than a lot of better players than me.”

Arthur Fery’s Best of 2026

Song of the year
Kettama’s “Comes and Goes”.

TV show of the year
The Gentlemen series two.

Favourite restaurant
Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse in the US.

Trend you liked
I quite like the way different men’s hairstyles are coming back, like the modern mullet and the taper on the sides.

Trend you want to die
AI dependency and people not thinking for themselves.

National moment
I’d say the World Cup – England beating Mexico.