Ben Shelton’s lights-out grand slam tennis evolves, from vibes to doing the math

MELBOURNE, Australia – Ben Shelton’s Australian Open equation is simple. Beat the best player in the world to reach the final, then beat either the second best player in the world by ranking or one of the greatest men’s players of all time.

He plays Jannik Sinner, world no. 1 and defending champion, in the semi-finals in Melbourne on Friday night. Alexander Zverev and Novak Djokovic contest the other semi-final. But even if he doesn’t win another fight, Shelton, the world no. 21, made one thing unusually clear to the tennis world over the past two weeks: It’s one thing to beat him in a tour event, it’s quite another to topple him at a grand slam.

The American has now played 10 majors, reaching the semi-finals twice and the quarter-finals once. Shelton is 24-9 overall in Grand Slam main draw matches and 18-4 on the hard courts in New York and Melbourne.

Shelton has been talking tennis math for a few weeks now, telling anyone who will listen that he backs himself in the best-of-five format more than anyone else. Grand Slam calculations form the basis of Shelton’s success in the biggest tournaments in tennis, where he has a 72 percent win rate. He is at 58 percent for all ATP Tour competitions, including majors.

“For me it’s really special to play at these big tournaments and play my best tennis at the big tournaments,” he said Wednesday night after beating Lorenzo Sonego of Italy, 6-4, 7-5, 4-6, 7 – 6 (4) in three and a half hours.

To look at Shelton’s game on the surface, his version of big-time tennis is all vibes and thunder: the massive serve, the curved forehands and backhands that take on an extra scream of effort when he gets his shoulders moving. It’s a force-of-nature approach to the tennis court that draws its opponent and everyone watching into a cauldron of vibes.

That may have been the case in his breakout run, especially at the 2023 US Open, when he sprinted to the semifinals with his hang-up thone party and forehands sliding down the sideline. Not so much now. The massive serving is transformed into something more difficult and more precise. The ground currents earn the right to finish points instead of exploding them. He is integrating more spin on his forehand and working hard to vary his return game.

“You get a few more balls back,” said his father and coach, Bryan Shelton, walking through a tunnel under Melbourne Park with his son. “You start to make a few smarter decisions. He does things that he didn’t do a year ago. “

It all goes back to the math. However, big plays come with small margins, especially for Shelton the last few years. A few loose points lost to rocket heads that just miss or to an overhit return here and there can get an opponent halfway to the finish line in a best-of-three match.

A few more and the game may well be over. In a best-of-five match, especially given how much time he spends in the weight room and running track, Shelton feels like he has all day to make up for a rope patch, because he kind of does, and so does everyone else, especially now that he’s achieved a certain level of Grand Slam success over and over again.

“I feel like I belong,” he said as he walked the corridor late Wednesday night. “I feel like I deserve it.”

So does his father.

“Do you have children?” he asked a while before Shelton spoke. “It’s small things, you work to pay small dividends here and there. Over time they will hopefully add it. “

He didn’t really talk about tennis. And then he was.

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Shelton knew it had to go this way — because of the math.

Rolling into the 2023 Australian Open quarter-finals and US Open semi-finals, he felt the dreamlike tennis he was living through could disappear at any moment. Back then, his serve, his greatest weapon, had to be perfect along with almost everything else. If he had a bad serving day or didn’t nail lines with his groundstrokes, he probably wouldn’t win.

More importantly, he had yet to figure out how to not only win without hitting 100 percent of the Hail Marys, but without using 100 percent of his energy, physical and mental.

This past year, and especially the last few months, he and his father have focused on tightening a safety net because most of the time he and any other player will be far from a perfect version of themselves on the tennis court.

His biggest task has been trying to figure out how to get into more points on his opponent’s serve. In the corridor late Wednesday, he talked about the past. He might start a match returning well by standing deep, but when an opponent made an adjustment and standing deep stopped working, he had nowhere to turn.

“I wasn’t good at making the adjustments or changing my position, giving guys different looks, and I want to do that now,” he said.

“The best returners in the world, they can do so many different things, and sometimes it’s hitting the ball and yelling into the baseline, and sometimes it’s a deep, floating chip. Sometimes it’s a chip at the feet. That’s a lot of what I’ve been working on. “

Against Sonego, Shelton was desperate not to blow away a two-set lead after finding himself in a fourth-set tiebreak. Shelton had scrambled Sonego early with a series of looping, spinny forehands that he had been practicing all December in Florida. Then Sonego rose. His winning total kept growing, from six in the first set and 14 in the second to 17 in the third and then 26 in the fourth. Shelton’s legs were fine, but his mind was fried from watching all those balls sail past him out of reach.

At 4-4, after some tight misses from behind by Shelton and at the net by Sonego, the Italian twisted a kick up the middle to Shelton’s forehand. He didn’t try to kill it: He hit a low chip short, drawing Sonego into the net where he didn’t really want to be at that moment. Sonego lifted an approach to Shelton’s backhand and he thundered it right back. Volley sailed long. Shelton closed it out from there to set up his date with world no. 1 and defending champion.

He is a realist. Sinner has been in a class of his own, joined and intermittently surpassed by Carlos Alcaraz, for the past five months. Shelton knows his chances are what they are. But the fight is still a huge opportunity to measure himself and his progress against the best that is on the biggest stage.

Shelton has beaten Sinner once, in October 2023 in Shanghai, as the Italian rounded into the form that took him to the top of the rankings. He hasn’t won a set against Sinner in four attempts since then.

He will try to think it doesn’t matter, just like he did before facing Lorenzo Musetti in the third round. Musetti had won both of their previous matches. People asked him how it was going.

“I don’t care who’s on the other side of the court,” he said after beating Musetti, who had never played him in a Grand Slam.

“If I’m healthy and I feel good, I always want to go the distance, five sets. Having confidence in your ability to make it to the end is half the battle. “

What is the other half? Sinner, and then maybe Djokovic. It’s the final weekend of a Grand Slam and only four players remain. It’s just math.

(Top photo: Mark Avellino / Anadolu via Getty Images)