LONDON — A local boy sleeps in his own bed, plays in front of a king and queen and makes a Cinderella run to the Wimbledon semifinals. Sounds like a Hollywood script that might never see the silver screen.

But it’s no fairy tale — it’s Arthur Fery’s out-of-nowhere performance over the last 10 days.

Fery, a virtually unknown British wild card with a triple-digit ranking, has become the emotional heartbeat of Wimbledon while legitimately diverting some national attention from England’s World Cup quest.

The royal treatment at his matches across the All England Club has come in more ways than one.

Fery, who grew up five minutes from Wimbledon and is staying at home during the tournament, first played before grass-court king Roger Federer, Wimbledon’s eight-time singles champion, during Monday’s fourth-round victory. Two days later, he beat No. 9 seed and French Open runner-up Flavio Cobolli of Italy in the quarterfinals 6-4, 7-6 (4), 6-0 in front of Queen Camilla.

Ranked 114th, Fery had never reached the semifinals of an ATP Tour event, let alone a major, before his brief chat with the queen following the match.

“She just said, ‘Congratulations, keep going,’” 23-year-old Fery told reporters later. “I told her it was my birthday on Sunday, so it would be great to play the Wimbledon final on my birthday.”

That’s still a match away. To get there, Fery will have to get past one of the hottest players on tour: No. 2 seed Alexander Zverev, who is fresh off his first Grand Slam title at the French Open. Looming on the other side of the draw is a highly anticipated showdown between defending champion Jannik Sinner against 24-time major winner Novak Djokovic.

If Fery can continue his magical run to the end, he would become the first British wild card to win a Wimbledon title.

Born in France, Fery’s family moved to Wimbledon when he was an infant. His mother played professional tennis. He was a top British junior but chose to sharpen his game for three years in the U.S. collegiate system at Stanford, as many of his compatriots have done.

“I came out with a lot of hunger coming out of that, and I was ready to attack the pro circuit,” Fery said.

After struggling with bone bruising in his arm that limited him to playing mostly on the lower-tier Challenger circuit in recent years, Fery is finally healthy and playing consistently.

His path to the last four in London has been a masterclass in clutch come-from-behind performances. The Brit has stared down near-certain elimination in multiple matches, repeatedly breaking his opponents’ momentum with Houdini-like on-court acts.

At 5-foot-9, Fery possesses a skill set perfectly suited for low-bounding grass.

His compact strokes, low center of gravity, and elite movement allow him to hug the baseline, take time away from opponents, and confidently execute delicate volleys at the net, according to ESPN analyst Chris Eubanks.

“He defends well,” said Eubanks, a 2023 Wimbledon quarterfinalist. “He can scrap. He can claw. He can dig his way back into points. And when he ventures forward, he’s very, very comfortable at the net. This is a picture-perfect example of someone whose game is built for the surface.”

Still, it’s hard to fathom the multitude of milestones for Fery, who briefly reached the No. 1 ranking in college and earned 2023 Pac-12 Singles Player of the Year honors before leaving early to pursue a pro career.

He arrived at Wimbledon with just one main-draw victory at a major, a losing record as a professional, and only one previous ATP quarterfinal, at Queen’s Club last month. He’s now 11-8, won his first two five-set matches, and is the first British wild card to reach the Wimbledon men’s semifinals in the Open Era. The only other men’s wild-card semifinalist was Goran Ivanisevic, who won the title as a wild card in 2001.

Fery, who started the season ranked No. 185 and will climb to at least No. 36 after the tournament, said there were a “lot of first times” as he reflected on his unprecedented run. “First five-setter, longest match that I’ve ever played, first time breaking into the top 100, first second week in a slam, all at home, five minutes from where I grew up. It’s a great story for me,” he said.

The gap with his fellow semifinalists is understandably massive.

Entering Wimbledon, Djokovic, Sinner and Zverev’s combined records include 29 Grand Slam titles, 2,088 match wins and 155 tour-level titles. Fery was 6-8 in tour-level matches with zero titles.

But he has singlehandedly lifted the tournament for locals. With top hopes Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu withdrawing before the tournament and the rest of Britain’s singles prospects falling one by one — 18 men and women were eliminated by the third round — Fery became the nation’s last knight standing.

If his first name inevitably evokes Arthurian legend, Fery’s march through the draw gave Britain reason to believe again. No sword, no Round Table, just world-class shot-making, a lion’s heart and a Centre Court crowd thrilled to rally behind him.

“This is really quite something to see on home soil,” said Russell Fuller, the BBC’s tennis correspondent, who compared it with Raducanu’s stunning U.S. Open win in 2021 as a qualifier.

Fery earned every bit of it.

In the first round against Damir Dzumhur, Fery dropped the opening set and trailed by a break in the second before surging back. Against Zizou Bergs in the third round, he faced a 4-1 deficit with a double break in the fourth set, and again fell behind 4-1 in the fifth, before somehow surviving.

Then, stepping onto Centre Court for the first time against former top-10 stalwart Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria in the fourth round, Fery clawed out of a 2-sets-to-1 hole and a break down in the fourth set to clinch the victory in a fifth-set tiebreak.

“He carries himself with humility, but he’s a fierce competitor, and he’s got a ton of belief in himself,” said Stanford men’s coach and former top-60 player Paul Goldstein, who flew to England Tuesday to see his former charge compete against Cobolli.

While Fery attempts to outmaneuver Zverev on Friday, the other semifinal features a 2025 Wimbledon semifinal rematch between seven-time Wimbledon winner Djokovic and top-ranked Sinner, who defeated the Serb in straight sets on his way to the title. It’s also their second Grand Slam semifinal meeting in 2026. At January’s Australian Open on hard courts, Djokovic bested 24-year-old Sinner in five sets before falling to now-injured Carlos Alcaraz in the Melbourne final.

Arthur Fery hits a return during his Wimbledon quarterfinal win over Flavio Cobolli on Wednesday.

(Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

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Djokovic, 39, enters the match after surviving a grueling five-set, 5-hour-plus quarterfinal slugfest against No. 3 Félix Auger-Aliassime that concluded just minutes before Wimbledon’s 11 p.m. curfew. But the seventh-seeded Serb has a way of defying Father Time and he has had two days to recover on a surface where points are shorter and generally less taxing on the body.

Italy’s Sinner, who defeated Alcaraz in last year’s Wimbledon final, has been efficient if not at the level that saw him capture five consecutive titles before crashing out in the second round at the French Open. After a first-round scare here, the four-time Grand Slam champion has dominated opponents behind his improving serve, winning 80% of his first-serve points. He hasn’t dropped a set since the opening round. Sinner leads the head-to-head with Djokovic 6-5.

According to Eubanks, Djokovic must disrupt Sinner’s movement to break his rhythm, and take his chances.

“He’s got to play similar to how he played in Australia, where it was just all-out aggression,” Eubanks said.

For Sinner, he added: “His serve can be a neutralizing force for what Novak is going to try to do.”

On the other side of the ledger, Fery’s poise under pressure and deft use of the home crowd will be paramount to continue his surprise run against Germany’s Zverev, whom he called a “step up again” from his last five matches. Zverev, 29, is seeking his fifth major final and first at Wimbledon.

“I’m ready for it,” Fery said. “I have nothing to lose. I’m just going to go out there and … put my game on the court, do what I’ve done, believe in myself. We’ll see where that takes me.”

Home has never been closer to Centre Court. Nor has Arthur Fery ever been closer to tennis history.

Jared Jones was flirting with Major League Baseball history on Wednesday night — he got it, but it was not what he originally envisioned.

The Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher retired the first 18 batters he faced, but he was taken out in the middle of his perfect game bid after six innings.

Now, the Pirates certainly have their reasons — the 24-year-old Jones hasn’t thrown more than 81 pitches in eight starts since returning May 20 after missing all of last season while undergoing ulnar collateral ligament internal brace surgery on May 21, 2025. He was yanked with 77 pitches and likely would have needed more than 100 pitches to record the 25th perfect game in MLB history.

However, Jones left the game after getting zero run support, so when the Atlanta Braves tacked on three runs late for a 3-0 victory, Jones instead found himself in the wrong chapter of the history books.

According to Opta Stats, Jones became the first pitcher in the modern era (since 1920) to pitch at least six perfect innings and not record a win.

“It does suck. Something’s cool coming on, but I’m on what? My eighth start off of surgery? I completely understand it, and it is what it is,” Jones told reporters after the game.

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Jones said he didn’t entertain attempting to complete the perfect game.

“Not with the pitch count,” he said. “Not really ever expecting to go nine right now, so that was never in my head.”

Joey Bart, traded to the Braves from the Pirates on June 18, followed a double by Mike Yastrzemski with a 422-foot, two-run homer to left-center field off a slider from Dennis Santana. Drake Baldwin added an RBI single to center in the ninth for good measure.

It was the second time in less than a week that a pitcher was taken out of the game with a perfect bid through six innings — the Miami Marlins took Eury Perez out after seven innings in which he had 92 pitches. Perez, too, is in the midst of returning from injury and has surprisingly found himself right in the postseason mix.

He was pulled for Lake Bachar to start the eighth, and the Marlins allowed eight runs to the Athletics in the final two innings, but held on to win 9-8.

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The Pirates are 4.0 games out of the final wild card spot, which is held by the Marlins.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON — The Dodgers are scheduled to visit the White House on July 23 to celebrate their latest World Series title.

“President Trump is excited to welcome the Los Angeles Dodgers BACK to the White House to celebrate their World Series championship!,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement to The Times.

The date falls on a scheduled off day in the middle of a nine-game East Coast road trip for the Dodgers. The team will play three games in Philadelphia against the Phillies July 20-22 before ending the trip with a three-game series against the New York Mets July 24 to 26.

The visit continues a tradition from the Dodgers’ two previous World Series championships. They were hosted by President Biden in 2021 and President Trump in April 2025.

After the Dodgers claimed their second consecutive World Series title with a dramatic Game 7 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays, a visit to the White House was planned, but it wasn’t until Thursday that a date was officially booked and confirmed.

Questions swirled around whether players would decline the visit this year after it did not happen during a scheduled visit to Washington in April.

Kiké Hernández said in 2018 he was unsure he would have gone had the Dodgers won the World Series the previous year. Mookie Betts said he was undecided and needed to talk it over with his family when last year’s visit was announced. After winning his first World Series with the Boston Red Sox in 2018, Betts skipped their trip to the White House the following year during Trump’s first term.

Both players, along with every returning member of the 2024 team who was with the team during its road trip, participated in the visit. The only notable absence was first baseman Freddie Freeman, who remained in Los Angeles to nurse an ankle injury.

Manager Dave Roberts, who indicated in comments to The Times in 2019 he might not go to the White House if Trump was president, also participated in last year’s ceremony.

Asked at the Dodgers’ fan festival in January about the possibility of returning to the White House, Roberts told The Times’ Bill Shaikin: “For me, I stand by: I’m a baseball manager. That’s my job.”

“I was raised — by a man who served our country for 30 years — to respect the highest office in our country,” Roberts said. “For me, it doesn’t matter who is in the office, I’m going to go to the White House. I’ve never tried to be political. … For me, I am going to continue to try to do what tradition says and not try to make political statements, because I am not a politician.”

Clayton Kershaw, who retired after last season but was on Team USA for this year’s World Baseball Classic, told The Times in the spring that he was aware Dodgers fans are split over whether the team should visit the White House again this year, but he said he is looking forward to it.

“I went when President Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”

Times deputy sports editor Ed Guzman contributed to this report.