NEW YORK – How much did the crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium want American Ben Shelton to win the US Open? This much: the shouts of Shelton trying to rally for victory were even louder than those due to the crowd’s shots of Jalen Brunson, Karl-Antony Towns and the rest of the world champion Knicks in the video stadium. That’s how you know you’ve got New Yorkers in your corner.
Unfortunately for Shelton, Arthur Ashe’s crowd couldn’t help him land his second serve, attack his racket, or parry his way past Alexander Zverev. Shelton, the slowest American man looking to end his Grand Slam-less hitting streak that will stretch into 24 years, simply couldn’t get past Zverev, no matter how hard the crowd pushed him.
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“I need you guys on Sunday to bring energy,” Shelton said Friday night after losing to fellow American Francis Tiafoe. “I’m going to go for it here. I’m going to leave everything on the court. I hope you guys come and bring me back. Let’s do this for the USA.” They did bring energy, but not nearly enough.
There was a moment where the match could have turned out differently, when Shelton finally broke Zverev in the 34th game of the match to win the third set. For the first time in the competition, the smirk that has become Shelton’s signature meant something.
Hope fizzled for a brief moment … and then Zverev broke straight back to start the quarter, and then cruised to a 6-3, 7-6 (2), 5-7, 6-2 victory. Zverev was so locked in that he served with Shelton to win the match and the title, he didn’t even know he had won, putting an end to the joke.
Zverev was confident after the match that he thought the score was only 5-1 when he hit his last serve. He said the mistake really helped him avoid the nerves that come with serving from the Grand Slam.
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“[It] “You helped me,” Zverev said. I would probably have served three double faults for one. I thought it was 5-1 twenty, I knew it was broken twice, but I remember it was a long match. It’s been a long two weeks.”
For more than a decade, the now 29-year-old Zverev was the single player who most felt the pinch of all those greats going to the Big Three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, and then the Big Two in Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. Despite seven semifinals and three final appearances, he has never won a Grand Slam. But Roland-Garros broke out earlier this year, and now he has another.
For Zverev, it turns out that it’s just a matter of time. But there is a time that is now looming over the American men – decades of time when one of them can break through and win just one Grand Slam event. No Wimbledon. Roland Garros No. No Australian. No weekend. Not since Andy Roddick won here in 2003 has an American man won. And in tennis, the flag on one side of your name is almost as important as your name on the other.
I love the World Cup, where every year the Americans fail on the global stage, the drought of tennis is almost unbreakable. How can America produce so many tennis players, so many boxers, and not one tennis champion of men?
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Unlike the World Cup, however, the American men will have four opportunities to claim the elusive Grand Slam next year, starting in a few months in Australia. The natural assumption would be that if the American people were kicking down the door, they would eventually get the picture through…but in this case, the natural assumption could well be wrong.
If Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner regain their health and form, and if Zverev continues to rise, they will join forces as an obstacle for anyone trying to break through. Ask any American player — Mardy Fish, John Isner, Sam Querrey, James Blake — what it was like to play in the Nadal/Federer/Djokovic era, and the story always ends the same way.
Ben Shelton had his moments, but eventually Alexander Zverev proved to be too much.
(AP Photo/Adam Hunger)
Ironically, the 23-year-old Shelton offers some web to those who insist that America dominates in no sport, but our best athletes insist on football or basketball. Shelton came to the game late, initially thinking his 6-foot-4 height and preternatural athleticism would be better suited to football. He did not go through the American tennis-industrial complex in his youth, but learned the game from his father. A rare combination of art, grace, and charisma that separates the great from the very good.
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The question now is whether he will be able to capitalize on the opportunity that lies ahead. This year’s US Open marked Shelton’s unfamiliar territory. He has never before reached the finals of a Grand Slam event, falling in the semifinals of the 2023 US Open and the 2025 Australian Open. But Shelton was inconsistent in the Grand Slam stages; in 2026 alone he has everything from the first round at Wimbledon to this final appearance. Will this experience help him get to the next step on the ladder, or will it hold him back another step? We will have to wait until the Australian Open in January to begin learning the answer.
For his part, Roddick is not celebrating his status as the latest American to win a Grand Slam. But whatever.
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“It is said that I hate this place”; he said on his “Served” podcast last year. “I’ve been asking about it all season. I’m not the Dolphins. I’m not a champagne pop when someone’s season is perfect. I just want this, maybe more than anyone outside of the people who won until the end.”
It is an old truism in Formula 1 racing – another international sport where the United States have not failed to dominate – that catching opponents is one thing, passing them is another. For so many years, American men could not take the dominant men’s tennis leadership. At least Shelton is scrutinized at his level. It remains now to learn how to transcend them.
Yahoo Sports’ Jack Baer contributed to this report.