Is Ben Shelton About to Go Big at the US Open?

After a hectic media day out in Flushing, Queens, at the US Open, Ben Shelton, the 22-year-old seeded sixth in the tournament, pulls up outside of New York City’s Polo Bar around 9 p.m., tall, commanding, and dressed in a tangle of silver necklaces and a vintage Olympics-themed bomber. Maybe three seconds after he’s exited his Escalade, a man walking by shouts, “Ben! No way.” Shelton claps hands with the passerby, who tells the tennis player to “give ’em hell!”—rather instant proof that Shelton is quickly becoming one of the sport’s biggest stars, both widely recognized and amiable enough to handle the attention easily.

That star power has gotten brighter in just the past few weeks, as Shelton clinched the most important title of his career: the Canadian Open in Toronto, a Masters 1000-level event (the second most prestigious tournament threshold, essentially, after the Majors). Of the actively playing American men, only he and Taylor Fritz hold Masters 1000 titles.

Photo: Nick Remsen

The win marked a coming-of-age moment that tennis pundits have long foretold—provided that Shelton could make a few adjustments to his game. He’d need to down the callowness (remember his triumphant hanging-up-the-phone gesture, later seemingly mocked by Novak Djokovic?), tune up the focus, work on his movement, and not rely so heavily on his big first serve.

Well, Shelton has notably improved on all of the above. He’s now into the second round of the US Open, having handily beat the Peruvian qualifier Ignacio Buse on Sunday.

“For me, it was just consistency,” says Shelton, discussing what it took to get to that next level in Canada. “I was solid from the baseline, I was serving and returning well, and I was willing to come to net—it was just like everything kind of came together in my game, and it was the overall consistency that really helped me back up each result, match after match.”

“I’m taking that same thinking into the Open,” he continues. “Staying consistent is even more important in three-out-of-five-set matches, to be able to wear on guys over that long of a match, if it gets there. I think it’s also about having more confidence: If you lose a set, to be able to keep going and to keep believing. You have more of a chance when it’s three out of five. But yeah, consistency is the name of the game for me right now. It’s where I’m trying to be at practice every day, and it’s where I’ll try to be in my matches.”