THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, LONDON — There are only two players who have been able to knock Ben Shelton out of Grand Slams this year: Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner.
That’s good news and bad for Shelton, who exited Wimbledon in the quarterfinals Wednesday afternoon as Sinner sent him home, 7-6(2), 6-4, 6-4.
Forgive Shelton for his sense of déja vu. He has entered Grand Slam Groundhog Day.
The 22-year-old flamethrower lights up the grounds in week one. He thrills crowds with those blasted 145-mile-per-hour serves and an athleticism that allows him to throw his body across the court and come up with highlight-reel material match after match.
Shelton thrives in the heat and pressure of the four majors in ways he rarely does in a regular tour event, even the more important ones.
And then he walks onto the court with one of the two otherworldly talents of his generation. He hangs with them early. They can’t get reads on his serve; his power off the ground is a lot to handle, too. He’s coming forward to close points; he’s hitting forehand winners from the backhand corner.
Into the first-set tiebreak they go. There’s a lead to be grabbed, the chance to send the pressure the other way. And when he needs it more than ever, the stuff that has gotten him to this precipice isn’t there.
Some of that owes to those generational talents, who force most opponents to hit miracle shots to stay with them. There’s not much shame in losing to guys named Sinner and Alcaraz in Grand Slams when they have shared the last six. The pressure they put on their opponents to be perfect is relentless, and even when those opponents are as good as they can be, Sinner and Alcaraz find a way to be better. They turn defense into offense from both corners of the court, even from four feet behind the baseline.
Shelton will likely still lie awake for a few nights wondering how things might have gone differently if he had made a few more first serves in the first-set tiebreak against Sinner, instead of missing four out of five. He knows better than anyone that he can’t blame the guy on the other side of the net for that.
He might wonder if he had to pull the trigger so flat and hard in key moments, rather than going for shape and direction.
A couple hours after Sinner had finished the business, Shelton was already thinking about the pressure he had endured and how he had responded to it.
“Possibly trying to go a little bit too big on the first serve in those moments or hitting it too hard,” he said.
“When my tempo gets quick, I tend to miss those serves in the net. Being able to stay calm and keep my emotions the exact same and know that my normal service motion where I go after a first serve, it’s going to show up at 140 on the clock.
“It’s not like when I go and hit my smooth service motion, it’s going to come off 122. If I go from a flat serve with a smooth motion, it’s going to come off 140, but chasing 147 sometimes in those moments, which is stupid.”
It was hauntingly similar to a month ago at the French Open, in a first-set tiebreak against Alcaraz in the round of 16 in front of a packed crowd on Court Philippe-Chatrier. He had a set point on his serve then, too. In that match, he did grab the third set as Alcaraz dipped, but the Spaniard never gave him a genuine look-in.
Back in Australia in January, during his semifinal against Sinner, he had a chance to serve out the first set and came up short, then let Sinner raise his game and blow past him in the tiebreak.
Barring injury, closing that gulf, if it can be closed, may be his life’s work for the next decade.
“His ball speed is really high,” a downcast Shelton said of Sinner after the match.
“Never seen anything like it. You don’t see anything like it when you’re going through the draw. When you play him, it’s almost like things are in 2X speed. I’m usually pretty good at adjusting to that speed.”
Shelton has been blessed with a huge reservoir of physical talent. He is a far better tennis player than he was a year ago, and last year was far better the year before that. The results and the ranking speak for themselves, as does his improved return of serve. He has focused on what he needs to improve more than his natural gifts.
Since the beginning of this first full season in 2023, after he dropped out of college to become a pro, he has played 11 Grand Slams and made three semifinals, plus the quarters this year at Wimbledon. He will rise to a career-high No. 9 in the rankings next week.
Sinner, who is 23, had some similar frustration when he was at Shelton’s position on his climb up the tennis ladder. He kept bumping into Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic in the big spots and coming up short.
After dispatching Shelton Wednesday, Sinner was asked to explain his run of success the past 18 months, winning three Grand Slam titles and making the final of the French Open last month.
The only player to beat him at a Grand Slam since the start of 2024 is Alcaraz.
“You get more into big stages, you get used to it,” he said, emphasizing that it’s not just about the settings, but about moments.
“Quarterfinals in Grand Slams are different,” he said. “Semifinals in Grand Slams are different, and finals obviously are different, too. You feel that before the watch, the walk-on. You know also the warm-up, that you try to have good feelings. So at times it’s very difficult also for us to play against these kind of players. Ben is very young. Huge servers. It’s not easy to play against them because you might have chances, and then he serves well, and you don’t know exactly what to do. When he serves 140 miles on the line, it’s quite impossible also to return.”
Maybe it will be that simple for Shelton. Maybe he will keep beating up on lesser talent in the early rounds, where he has often had some decent luck in Grand Slam draws, and keep landing on the biggest courts in the world against the best of the best and it will begin to feel normal.
He played on Rod Laver Arena in Australia for the first time this year. Same with Philippe-Chatrier in Paris. He has yet to make it to Centre Court at Wimbledon. He was one match away. Had Djokovic, a seven-time Wimbledon winner and 24-time Grand Slam champion, not been playing in the other quarterfinal, Shelton would likely have been there against Sinner.
That will have to wait. Judging by Shelton’s Grand Slam history and his trajectory up the rankings, it seems more likely than not that he will get there, and there’s a decent chance someone named Sinner or Alcaraz will be on the other side of the net, in front of the bright lights.
“I always say tennis is a mental game,” Sinner said. “I think it’s a mix of experience, getting used to it, and also, of course, the main priority is to get better as a player.”
Shelton is that close now. And also that far away.
(Photo: Getty Images)
