Ben Shelton Took Down Carlos Alcaraz In The Match Of His Life

Who knew Ben Shelton could do all that? Certainly not the Defector writer who was slandering him in the early stages of the match as "John Isner with WiFi." The 23-year-old American revealed levels to his game heretofore unseen, over the course of a U.S. Open quarterfinal that technically began Tuesday night but was mostly played early Wednesday morning. Matched up against defending champion Carlos Alcaraz, Shelton hit the apex of his career at 3:33 a.m., when he wrapped up the deciding set tiebreak to win 6-7(5), 6-1, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6(7) and advance to his second Open semifinal.

In the great tradition of 21st-century American men's tennis players, Shelton's key weapon is his serve, which he hits not just with peerless top-end speed (he reached 149 mph in this match) but also a rich variety of spin and location. Bouncy and explosive, the 6-foot-4 Shelton has more to his game than the servebots of yore, but if you were to isolate the one reason that he's made it into the top 10, it's clearly that shot. Over the past 52 weeks, he has held serve 90.4 percent of the time, second on tour behind Jannik Sinner, per Tennis Abstract.

Counterbalancing that dominance is his return game, which is the worst of any top-50 player on tour, as measured by break percentage (13.1) or return points won (31.9 percent). Big strong Ben can generate incredible racket head speed when he takes heavy cuts at the ball, but has struggled with the finer control of his racket face on shorter backswings, when rushed from the baseline or dealing with incoming serves. That's why Shelton, who has a reputation as a great entertainer, can actually be a rather choppy watch: He struggles to keep returns in play, and has a limited tolerance for longer rallies. Both traits have improved since he first arrived on tour, but not enough, I thought, to test gatekeepers Sinner and Alcaraz, who had removed Shelton from three Slams in 2025. (A shoulder injury retired him from the fourth.)

Shelton's serve is enough to get him to a tiebreak against any player in the world, and he is physical enough to embrace a marathon match. But I remained low on his chances of winning this matchup, because I didn't trust him to make much of a dent in return games if Alcaraz served at a roughly average level, and it didn't seem possible that Shelton's middling backhand would survive being hunted by the tour's best forehand in crosscourt patterns.

For all the mystery, heading into this U.S. Open, that Alcaraz forehand had already rounded into tour-destroying form. This was his first tournament after four months off due to inflammation in the tendon sheath in his right wrist. Even so, Alcaraz claimed not to feel any pain as he flew through the first week, with reduced first-serve speeds as perhaps the only sign of rust. In his straight-set dismissal of Tommy Paul in the fourth round, Alcaraz appeared to have been restored to his old level of play. Shelton, despite his steady march up the rankings, hadn't fleshed out his game enough since their last encounter to change the expected result of the rematch.

Then the actual match began, and Alcaraz faltered just enough, with baseline errors and double faults, to narrow the gap. Shelton burst out of the gates playing energetic and effective tennis. By the end of the first set, it was still Alcaraz who had squeaked ahead, having struck a few unprecedented shots to close out the set. I'm thinking of the backpedaling, almost-falling-over reflex backhand lob, and the semi-wrong-footed, open-stance backhand passing shot. Alcaraz briefly disappeared from the premises in the second set, in which he was broken three times in a row, and went down an early break in the third, which is when I finally began to entertain the possibility of Shelton pulling this off.

Shelton deserves immense credit: At every weak point of his game, he overperformed. He returned as well as he ever has, and hit perhaps 15 of the best individual backhands of his life, shots I didn't think he had sound enough technique to execute, including some on the run with a narrow window of viability. The most surprising aspect of this match was how Shelton fared well in the longer rallies, winning 12 of the 26 points over nine shots. He didn't necessarily look like he was in charge at all times, often scrambling end to end in hopes of getting the rally back to neutral terms, but I was impressed by how often he succeeded at that, given the incoming firepower. Alcaraz and Shelton can run and jump like few of their peers, and a handful of cat-and-mouse points delighted the thousands of fans who stuck around in Arthur Ashe Stadium, undeterred by the deranged hour of the night.

Alcaraz, who vomited into a towel at least twice in late stages of the match, had chances as late as the second changeover in the deciding tiebreak, including one fairly straightforward backhand down the line that would've put him up a mini-break. In the end, he had too many unforced errors to defeat the best possible version of Shelton. Judging by his post-match remark—"I leave the court with a smile, healthy, and this is what I needed"—and the visual evidence of that smile, Alcaraz is not too haunted by the loss, which was an encouraging test of his form, coming in cold off the longest layoff of his career. Meanwhile Shelton advances to an all-American semifinal Friday against Frances Tiafoe, who wrapped up a dramatic five-set quarterfinal of his own. Both have had the best results of their career on these home hard courts, and it will be the third time they've met at the U.S. Open since 2023. Perhaps Shelton is more like John Isner with 5G.