Newcastle United supporter Cameron Norrie has enjoyed his best performance at a Grand Slam at Wimbledon 2022. The 26-year-old was the last remaining British player in the men's or women's singles draw ahead of his quarter-final clash with David Goffin.
And after a gruelling five set clash with the Belgian, Norrie has become the first male tennis star since Sir Andy Murray to reach a Wimbledon semi-final and has set up a mouthwatering tie with defending champion Novak Djokovic.
Norrie reached a career-high number 10 in the world rankings on April4, 2022 and was ranked 123 in the doubles rankings on August 23, 2021. The South African born tennis player has four ATP Tour singles titles; including a Masters 1000 title at the 2021 Indian Wells Masters and a doubles title.
He's held the British number one ranking in the singles game since 18, October 2021. Norrie was the last standing Brit in the tournament after Andy Murray, Emma Raducanu, Liam Broady and Heather Watson were all knocked out of the singles.
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Norrie's father David is a huge Rangers fan, having been born in Glasgow, while his mother Helen is from Cardiff. He was born in Johannesburg in 1995 and his family spent three years in the country before relocating to New Zealand after a burglary at their family home.
The Magpies supporter moved to London aged 16 where he lived for three years training full-time at the National Tennis Centre, before securing a tennis scholarship at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where he studied sociology and played tennis for his college team "The Horned Frogs" from 2014 to 2017.
Norrie curtailed his academic studies to try and get onto the ATP tour, but a mishap during his college days acted as a major turning point in his career. He revealed he had crashed his moped in his second year after "a pretty big night and definitely a couple too many", which saw him need six stitches before missing out on a professional tournament which left his coach furious.
Of the wake-up call, Norrie said: "It was a realisation that I was kind of not doing it the way I wanted to do it and making not the best decisions. I was going out more than I probably should have been, like a typical student there at TCU, enjoying myself a lot. After that the coaches really kicked me into gear and I was definitely more professional after that. I grew up a lot after that. From then on, I was like, OK, I want to play tennis and commit to that and do that."
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