Fresh from a Stanford dorm room, Arthur Fery is the college kid, Wimbledon local and British wild card who introduced a little chaos and uncertainty into Daniil Medvedev's head in the opening round of The Championships.

For two and a half sets on No.1 Court, there wasn't so much between the world No.3 and the third highest-ranked player in American college tennis, a 20-year-old who has just completed his junior year at Stanford.

Losing to a qualifier in the first round of Roland-Garros had been enough of an indignity for Medvedev, but if the former world No.1 and 2021 US Open champion had also been beaten in his opening match at Wimbledon, by a student ranked almost 400 places below him, that could have brought on an existential crisis.

"I was pretty nervous. I said good luck to Arthur [at the net]. He is just starting out and I wish him well," Medvedev said after his 7-5, 6-4, 6-3 victory over the world No.391.

On his first appearance at Tour level, Fery was wonderfully irreverent, just as all wild cards should be when playing a seed.

Scanning the ATP rankings beforehand, this appeared to have all the makings of a mismatch, with Fery only the 13th highest-ranked Briton. As the players warmed up, the difference in height contributed to impressions that this wasn't going to be a close contest: at 6ft 6in (1.98m), Medvedev is almost a foot taller than Fery, who is 5ft 8in.

But what Fery bought to the grass was confidence. The gumption to have a go, to play some shots and to keep alive the art of serve-and-volleying on the lawns of London, to be artful Arthur.

In the words of the ATP website, Fery is a "Wimbledon native". He grew up in Wimbledon and has childhood memories of his mother Olivia, a former WTA player, picking him up from primary school and taking him to the All England Club to watch The Championships. Now it was his turn to perform on the grass and while he didn't win a set, no one could say that he didn't make the most of the opportunity.

If it hadn't started to rain at 5-5, you wonder if the opening set would have finished differently. When they resumed after a short but unsettling delay, Fery was immediately broken and then Medvedev served out the set.

Maybe others would have faded away after that. But that wasn't how Fery was going to approach this and he remained competitive with Medvedev, who has a chance of leaving the All England Club at the top of the rankings again.

This is Medvedev's happy place - he loves everything about the All England Club, even noticing the care that the gardeners put into choosing the flowers.

But having never got past the fourth round here, his affection for Wimbledon hasn't so far brought out the best in him. This is the summer, Medvedev has said, when he plans on changing that. He has "big goals" for the Fortnight.

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