Welcome back to The Debrief, Box Score’s freewheeling conversation. This week, we’re talking tennis: what Ben Shelton’s historic run in Flushing means, how ESPN whiffed in its coverage, and why—with its midnight matches, massive crowds, and $100 chicken nuggets—the US Open may have jumped the shark for its real fans.
This Week’s Contributors
Cecil Harris
Author of Charging the Net: A History of Blacks in Tennis from Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe to the Williams Sisters and Different Strokes: Serena, Venus, and the Unfinished Black Tennis Revolution.
Andrew Lawrence
Senior features writer at the Guardian US who has covered tennis and the US Open for the past 20 years at the Guardian and Sports Illustrated.
Matt Marolf
Tennis writer for the last 10 years who has been attending the US Open for the past 20+ years.
Alexander Zverev won the men’s US Open. But Ben Shelton stole the show. Shelton turned a football-dominated weekend into a national conversation about American tennis and looked like the crossover star the sport has been waiting for. When did it start to feel like Shelton’s run was bigger than tennis?
Andrew: Especially after the two Americans on the women’s side, Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula, lost in their semis, Shelton became the guy that people came to see. It just felt like we were building to a place where, if he wins this thing, this guy is gonna be the Kevin Hart of sports. We’re not gonna be able to turn on a screen without seeing him constantly selling us some kind of product.
Cecil: The cultural significance of Friday night’s semifinal between Shelton and Frances Tiafoe, in Ashe Stadium, to become the first Black man to play in a US Open final since Ashe in 1972 can’t be overstated.
Shelton is a second-generation Black tennis pro, the son of Bryan Shelton, whom Ashe inspired to play. A sport that wasn’t always welcoming to Black athletes has in Shelton a superb athlete who chose tennis over football. Shelton and Tiafoe will inspire other young Black men to pursue tennis careers. That match—and Taylor Townsend’s career Grand Slam in doubles—will make the dream of a tennis career more real for kids from underrepresented groups.
Andrew: This final was different from Taylor Fritz in the final two years ago, where Fritz was basically like cannon fodder, “Thanks for getting here.” With Ben, there was this sense of, yes, he's here early in a lot of ways, but he just beat Carlos Alcaraz. He had the wind—and the crowd—at his back. Anytime he seemed like he was giving any sort of negative body language, there’d be a “U-S-A” chant, or some cheer to remind him of the assignment, and the fact that he has the country behind him.
Alas, Andy Roddick remains the answer to a trivia question—the last American man to win a Grand Slam, 23 years ago. After watching Shelton get to that historic final but then get handled by Zverev in four sets, are you more or less convinced he’s the guy who can finally break the drought?
Matt: Shelton is still only 23 years old. This was his first Slam final. And more than any of the other current crop of American men, he has that big weapon in the serve, and that aura that can really intimidate opponents at times. I think the nerves got the best of him, and he was probably a bit tired from two physically and very emotionally draining matches in the last few rounds. But I still think Shelton is a guy who can win a few majors.
Andrew: I felt like the final was one of those situations where an established fighter catches a fighter on the rise early and is able to win a belt in that way.
Shelton’s first serve was a disaster, and that’s usually the thing that he can fall back on. He gave up so many free points, double-faulting to give up break points. It was really the clearest indicator of maybe the nerves that he felt in that spot. That swagger was missing. And I don’t know if it was just because he had to play a different part because this was a different stage and a different phase, or if he was truly awed by the moment.
Cecil: After winning that match and beating Tiafoe, Shelton came out and addressed the crowd, “I need you to bring your energy Sunday.” The crowd brought the energy—they wanted to carry him across the line. But Shelton just didn’t bring his A-game. He was never able to put pressure on Zverev. It was surprisingly comfortable for Zverev to play his game. And that was not the Ben Shelton we saw in his first six matches.
Andrew: There’s so much of his game that still is unpolished. In addition to the tools that he brings to the job, it’s his mentality and desire and focus that really make me want to invest in his long-term success, because he’s not trying to just get the US Open trophy to get the monkey off America’s back. He wants to be a Final Boss. He wants to be in the mix with Sinner and Alcaraz.
Shelton was the star of the match of the Open, one of the best matches of the year—but unless you were willing to stay up until 3:30 in the morning on the East Coast, you were asleep for his quarterfinal win over Carlos Alcaraz, an Ali-Frazier-level spectacle staged at an hour when much of America was asleep. But that was just one of several marathon matches that ran into the wee hours and played to dwindling audiences. Is it time for radical changes?
Cecil: I’d like to see bold changes. You can’t ask people to watch tennis when you’re scheduling it at hours when they can’t watch. The new tournament director at the Australian Open is considering getting Tennis Australia to approve a change that would require all men's matches to be best of three until the semifinals to avoid these very late nights. I’m hoping they can at least give it a try.
Matt: I don’t want to lose the drama of best-of-five matches, which are often the most memorable matches in the sport. But the current best-of-five format has outlived its usefulness, as matches simply go on way too long in the modern game, which features such long rallies.
