For Leon Smith, a lightbulb lit up when he saw Fery for the first time. \u201cI can\u2019t remember what age group it was, under-14 or under-16. We\u2019re out in La Manga, we\u2019re doing a clay-court training camp and I saw him. And I said to the guy that was running it, \u2018This guy\u2019s got a lot in his game\u2019. I mean, he caught your eye. I think I might have said, \u2018A bit like [former Monte Carlo champion] Fabio Fognini, that one\u2019, because he had a great backhand, a lot of variety, a good confidence around him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to use \u2018arrogance\u2019, not that, but you could just say he backed himself and that\u2019s really important for a player when they get opportunities, that you do back yourself, because you have to perform in a bigger court and deal with expectations and whatnot. He\u2019s done that really well on various occasions.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, above all, has been the most extraordinary aspect of Fery\u2019s rise: the way in which his tennis improves on the biggest points. He also finds inspiration performing in the biggest stadiums, where players of his inexperience are more likely to shrink into themselves.<\/p>\n
This is a man with remarkable sang-froid. After beating Cobolli on Wednesday, Fery, who turns 24 on Sunday, the day of the men\u2019s final, was asked whether he could ever have dreamt, two weeks ago, of reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals. He almost shrugged in response, and replied: \u201cI\u2019ve always believed in myself and believed that I could, yeah, be a top player in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever happens against Zverev, Fery is guaranteed to climb at least 78 places on the back of this tournament. He would be No 36 in the world as a semi-finalist, No 26 if he reached the final, and No 13 if he won the title. Having begun the event as an apparent outsider, amid much discussion of exciting youngsters such as Jo\u00e3o Fonseca, Arthur Fils, Learner Tien and Rafael J\u00f3dar, Fery must now be considered one of the world\u2019s fastest-rising talents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Leon Smith, a lightbulb lit up when he saw Fery for the first time. \u201cI can\u2019t remember…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[217,101,5438,118,58919,56,54,55,157732,164415],"class_list":["post-683940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-standard","tag-tennis","tag-top-story","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-content","tag-wimbledon-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}