Ben Shelton won the all-American duel with Frances Tiafoe and now he’s the one who can end his country’s long wait for another men’s Grand Slam champion.
Shelton pulled out a 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 7-5 victory on Friday and will play No. 1 seed Alexander Zverev on Sunday for the U.S. Open title.
The No. 8-seeded Shelton had plenty of energy left after ousting defending champion Carlos Alcaraz in a quarterfinal match that ended Wednesday at 3:33 a.m., the latest finish ever at the U.S. Open.
Now he needs to stop French Open champion Zverev to give the host nation its first men’s major winner since Andy Roddick at the 2003 U.S. Open.
“I’m going for it here, and I’m going to leave it all on the court,” Shelton said. “I hope you guys come and back me. Let’s do it for the USA.”
Zverev beat Karen Khachanov 6-3, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (6) in the first semifinal.
“Hopefully I can not make the American dream come true on Sunday,” Zverev said.
The Shelton-Tiafoe match drew a star-studded crowd that included stars from sports, including Serena Williams, Jalen Brunson and of course U.S. soccer player Trinity Rodman, Shelton’s girlfriend; and actors Salma Hayek, Ben Stiller and Rami Malek.
Shelton and Tiafoe treated the fans to a good show, after both had to come through match tiebreakers in the previous round. Shelton, a 23-year-old from Georgia who was less than a year old when Roddick won his title, advanced to his first major final.
“This is where we want to be: at the tail end of this tournament,” Shelton said. “This is both of our favorite tournament in the world, our favorite court in the world and to be able to light it up in front of (this crowd) is the best feeling that there is.”
Tiafoe fell to 0-3 in the U.S. Open semifinals, the last two against fellow Americans. Taylor Fritz beat him in 2024 before losing to Jannik Sinner.
After a ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in which a giant American flag was unfurled across the court, it was Tiafoe who played the cleaner tennis in the first set. He committed just three unforced errors to 14 by Shelton, whose double-fault at 4-4 gave Tiafoe the break he needed.
But after falling behind, Shelton started serving bigger, and finished with 20 aces.
Serving with new balls at 3-all in the second set, Shelton started with a 125 mph serve — Tiafoe got his racket up almost in self-defense and ended up getting knocked backward to the court — and followed it with serves clocked at 144, 139 and 140, the last two for aces that gave him the lead for good in the set.
The pivotal moment in the match came in the final game of the third set, when Tiafoe was desperately trying to hold serve. The game lasted 15 minutes and 20 points before Tiafoe put a forehand into the net to end it and move Shelton a set away from the title.
Tiafoe had his own marathon in the quarterfinals, coming from two sets down and then erasing a 3-0 deficit in the fifth set to edge fellow American Alex Michelsen. He seemed to get slightly more cheers early, but the crowd was loud for both players as the match went on.
Zverev, who had long been considered the best men’s player without a major, finally broke through at the French Open this year. The German followed by reaching the Wimbledon final, where he lost to Sinner, and is 24-2 in Grand Slam matches this season.
“Sometimes just things go your way and I feel like I’ve had a lot of struggles at the major level, I was so close so many times, and maybe this year God has said that this is going to be your year and just enjoy the time on the court,” Zverev said.
Now he will try to win the title that he still can’t believe he let get away in 2020. Zverev won the first two sets against Dominic Thiem but then lost in a fifth-set tiebreaker, as Thiem became the first man to win the U.S. Open title after dropping the first two sets since 1949.
Zverev was solid after going up two sets this time, and has won 13 consecutive sets after becoming the first No. 1-seeded man to play five-setters in each of the first two rounds of a major.
