London - 09/07
Good morning and welcome back to TIE-Breakfast: all the tennis you need over breakfast.
Ace Cream's daily newsletter during Masters 1000 and Grand Slam events, every morning at 8:30.
Today is Thursday 9 July, in London it's 07:30 and it's 27 degrees. Ok, let's get started.
Today at breakfast
- 🇬🇧 Fery, the home wild card, knocks out Cobolli and flies into the semifinals
- 🇩🇪 Zverev sees off Fritz and will face Fery himself for a spot in the final
- 🇺🇦 Kostyuk surprises Paolini and reaches her first Wimbledon semifinal
- 🇨🇿 Noskova gets past Mertens and completes the women's picture
- 🇺🇸 Today the women's semifinals: Gauff-Muchova and Kostyuk-Noskova
WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY:
🇬🇧 Fery Knocks Out Cobolli And Flies Into The Semifinals
Arthur Fery beat Flavio Cobolli 6-4, 7-6(4), 6-0 on Centre Court, having entered the draw as a wild card and now finding himself in the Wimbledon semifinals. The third set, wrapped up without dropping a game, tells more than any statistic about how the match slipped out of Cobolli's hands, after the Englishman had already set the tone in the second-set tie-break. The home crowd carried Fery for two hours, and in that kind of setting certain runs start to feed on themselves. It remains to be seen whether such a sudden charge can withstand the next obstacle too, one of an entirely different calibre.
🇩🇪 Zverev Sees Off Fritz
Alexander Zverev got past Taylor Fritz 6-4, 6-4, 6-2, dictating the tempo from the very first game and leaning on a rock-solid day on serve. Fritz's match was hampered by knee tendinitis that flared up along the way, a detail that matters when reading such a one-sided scoreline. Now Zverev faces Fery, a clash that pits the experience of someone who knows Slam semifinals against the carefree ease of someone with nothing to lose. Matches like these are sometimes decided more in the head than on the shots.
🇺🇦 Kostyuk Surprises Paolini
Marta Kostyuk knocked out Jasmine Paolini 6-3, 6-2 in a little over an hour, without conceding a single break point and with a very high percentage of points won behind her first serve. More than Paolini's defeat, what stands out is the clarity with which the Ukrainian stripped the Italian of rhythm and reference points — a player who reached the final at this tournament two years ago. For Kostyuk it's a first Wimbledon semifinal, the high point of a journey long suspended between promise and results. The feeling is that this version of her, orderly and aggressive at once, is hard to stop once it finds continuity.
🇨🇿 Noskova Completes The Women's Picture
Linda Noskova beat Elise Mertens 6-3, 7-5, handling the Belgian's heavy spin with maturity and capitalizing on her errors in the moments that counted. For her it's a first career Slam semifinal, and it's no coincidence that the women's draw ended up rewarding those who managed to stay clear-headed the longest. The second set, reopened and then closed out at 7-5, says something about the Czech's ability not to lose the thread when the match gets complicated. There are paths built without fanfare, and this looks like one of them.
WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY:
- Gauff vs Muchova (Centre Court, from ~14:30) - the first women's semifinal pits the American, who has grown match after match on a surface that long troubled her, against the varied tennis of Muchova, who always finds solutions on grass
- Kostyuk vs Noskova (Centre Court, to follow) - two players in their first Wimbledon semifinal, a matchup with no clear favorite where handling the stakes better may make the difference
- Sinner and Djokovic resting - the men's side pauses for a day: the semifinals Sinner-Djokovic and Zverev-Fery are scheduled for tomorrow
Further reading
- Flavio Cobolli and Jasmine Paolini are out of Wimbledon
- Cobolli-Fery, Wimbledon: result and match report
- The schedule for Thursday 9 July: the women's semifinals take the stage
- When are the Wimbledon semifinals? Times and two days of rest
- Wimbledon 2026: Fery and Zverev lock in semifinal berths
Enjoy your breakfast and have a great day.
See you tomorrow at 08:30 with TIE-Breakfast
