From student to Australian Open quarter-finalist in the space of six months! Ben Shelton’s unusual path to professional tennis

The road to the tennis elite is a long and often unsuccessful one for most players. However, there are players so talented that they break through to the world’s best tennis players in the blink of an eye. A case in point is 20-year-old American Ben Shelton. In a matter of months, he has gone from university champion to Grand Slam quarter-finalist and is far from having the last word alongside his father.

The lanky left-hander from Atlanta, who is beaming smiles all over the world, has been making himself known more and more in recent months. However, less than a year ago, you would have been looking for him on the ATP circuit in vain. He chose a rather unusual path to professional tennis on the advice of his father. The results suggest it was the right choice.

Tennis beginnings and background

Shelton comes from a pure tennis family. His father Bryan is a long-time university coach and also a former elite 100 player, while his mother Lisa used to be a promising junior. Despite a clear aptitude for playing tennis, her parents weren’t going to force their son into their choice of sport. He didn’t even play regularly until he was twelve, devoting himself primarily to American football at quarterback.

In his teens, as if something suddenly changed, young Ben began to love tennis. Naturally, his father took him under his wing as a coach. Shelton was starting to pick up wins like a treadmill, and following in his father’s footsteps was looking more and more real.

After moving up to the junior category, the then only 16-year-old had an idea to travel to an ITF junior circuit tournament outside of America. His father asked him, “Are you the best junior in the U.S.?”

“Why do you want to play abroad if you’re not the best here yet?”

He hasn’t played a single game since Shelton’s last season

At the age of 17, offers of athletic scholarships from prestigious universities began to come in. Bryan’s father coached at the University of Florida, and it was clear where his son was headed.

In his first year, Shelton was able to help the Gators win the national title with a decisive win in NCAA team competition, finishing the season with a 10-2 record. Last year, on the other hand, he captured the individual championship and became the university’s number one player.

Rocket rise

The finance student began to look to the professional ATP circuit. His results from university earned him several wild cards to Challenger Tour tournaments, where he began earning important ranking points almost immediately.

It wasn’t until the Masters in Cincinnati in August that he was introduced to the wider tennis community. In the first round he defeated, in three sets, the then fifty-sixth ranked player, Lorenzo Sonega. In the second round, he faced Casper Ruud, ranked fifth in the world. Shelton excelled. He won twice 6-3 without any major difficulties after a virtually perfect performance and when he played the winning lob with his back to the net in the final game, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

When he dropped out in the first round of the US Open Shelton announced a hiatus and a full move to the pros. He added, however, that he plans to continue studying finance remotely. A string of three straight Challenger titles came at the end of the season. With these results, he had his first look at the elite 100 on November 21, finishing the year ranked ninety-seventh.

First tournament outside the USA and a lifetime of success

The year 2023 marks Shelton’s first full season as a professional and the associated travel outside of his native country. He started his career in New Zealand, where he was eliminated immediately in the first round of qualifying by Australian James Duckworth. The next week he managed to score his first win, but there was no sign of a significant chance of staying longer in the Australian Open.

The odds were in Shelton’s favour. He entered the first round against unseeded Zhizhen Zhang of China. After a long battle, the American finally managed to win the tiebreak of the final set, thus notching his first career Grand Slam win. But his journey through the tournament has only just begun.

Shelton took the next two matches without losing a set despite the hostile atmosphere. In the third round, he faced home favourite Alexei Popyrin. “It was a similar atmosphere to the outdoor match at the university. The fans booed me when I entered the court, but I can enjoy this hostile environment.

Nobody supports you when you play a winning shot. It can be a little bitter at times, but primarily it’s more motivating. I enjoyed the match and for the first time I felt at home on the court,” Shelton answered the journalists’ questions after advancing to the eighth round.

American Derby

He faced unseeded countryman Jeffrey John Wolfe in the eighth round. This match also went to a deciding fifth set. Shelton eventually prevailed after a 6-7, 6-2, 6-7, 7,6 and 6-2 result that guaranteed him a jump up the rankings to the 43rd place.

Some might argue that the 20-year-old tennis player from Atlanta was very lucky with his lot. There is some truth to that, after all, he hasn’t played a single top 50 player in four matches. That changed in the quarterfinal match when he ran into another compatriot, Tommy Paul.

Paul went into the match as the favourite. The thirty-fifth ranked player had wins over two seeded Spaniards, Davidovich Fokina and Bautista-Agut. This test was Shelton’s toughest yet.

The older and more experienced of the pair of Americans proved to be the more steady performer in the end, and after 6-7, 3-6, 7-5 and 4-6 Shelton had to say goodbye to Melbourne. In any case, this unexpectedly long journey through the tournament has become one of the most significant stories of this year’s Australian Open.

Throughout the tournament, Shelton has shown a winning mentality and, to some extent, chutzpah. These attributes predispose this young man for further success, and men’s tennis in the USA is thus nurturing the hope of ending the 20-year wait for a Grand Slam champion.

Source: New York Times, Australian Open