First British man into Wimbledon second round could have represented different country

Arthur Fery became the first British man to reach the second round at this year's Wimbledon, though the 23-year-old was eligible to compete under another country's flag. Following an opening round where no British players progressed, Fery provided rare good news by defeating Bosnia's Damir Dzumhur 3-6 6-2 6-2 6-1 to advance to face Otto Virtanen. However, this success came only because he chose to represent the country of his education rather than his birth.

Both of Fery's parents are French and he was born in Sevres, outside Paris. His father Loic Fery owns Ligue 1 club Lorient, while his mother Olivia is a former professional tennis player who secured two singles titles with a 33-25 record before retiring. She took part in the 1991 French Open and later represented Hong Kong at the Fed Cup.

Despite his French origins, Fery attended King's College School in Wimbledon and has established himself with the British contingent. He explained: "I was never really pushed to play tennis but we lived very close to a tennis club and my mum played professional tennis as well - she was very good - so that pushed me to try out tennis at least. I played football until I was 14, played rugby at school, played a bit of basketball, so I'm a sports fan in the first place and then had to kind of decide what sport I was going to take up and tennis kind of worked out so I stuck with it."

Fery divided his childhood between London and France before attending Stanford University for college tennis. Now ranked No.114, he dramatically recovered from being a set and a break down against Dzumhur to secure the second round for the second successive year.