NEW YORK (AP) — Ben Shelton is still just 20, still new to this whole professional tennis thing. He is equipped with a tremendously good serve, but don’t think he can’t come through in other ways when it matters the most.
On a muggy night in which, yes, he hit 14 aces but also hit 11 double-faults, Shelton used one blink-and-you-missed-it booming return to save a set point in the pivotal tiebreaker and reached his first Grand Slam semifinal by edging Frances Tiafoe 6-2, 3-6, 7-6 (7), 6-2 at the U.S. Open in a back-and-forth contest filled with huge hitting by both.
“Sometimes you’ve got to shut off the brain, close your eyes and just swing,” Shelton said about his forehand return winner off an 83 mph second serve that prevented Tiafoe from taking a two-sets-to-one lead. “Some may say ‘clutch,’ but I don’t know about all that.”
Tiafoe’s take?
“An unbelievable return from way back there,” he acknowledged. “Come on. That’s unheard-of stuff.”
Two missed shots by Tiafoe later, that set belonged to Shelton. He broke to begin the fourth and never looked back.
“End of that third set is when I really had to dig deep,” said Shelton, the youngest man from the United States in the U.S. Open semifinals since Michael Chang was 20 in 1992.
The matchup, which began in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Tuesday evening and ended after midnight on Wednesday, was the first major quarterfinal between two African-American men in the Open era, which dates to 1968.
“It’s great with two people of color going at it. Obviously a historic moment,” Tiafoe said. “But ultimately, once you get out there, you just want to win.”
It was also the first U.S. Open quarterfinal since 2005 between two men from the host country, which hasn’t claimed a Slam trophy in men’s singles since Andy Roddick won at Flushing Meadows two years prior to that.
The crowd seemed to have…
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