How About Ben Shelton Doing The Damn Thing For American Men's Tennis?

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Don't look now but Ben Shelton is into his second career grand slam semifinal. We knew Ben was going to bring an energy to the tour when he came over from his winning days over at UF, but this is legitimately exciting for American men's tennis. 

Doing this at 22 years old, less than three full seasons into his career is crazy impressive. We're not used to this kind of success on the men's side. Ben is a different breed though. He embraces the big moments and thrives in them. Yes he has the monster lefty serve and rocket launcher forehand, but the rest of his game is rolling into shape as well. 

You can already see Shelton is improving, which is scary. Point construction and returning levels are already seeing noticeable differences in a positive way. Is he a finished product? By no means, but his raw talent combined with the improvements are showing in a big way. 

Shelton's wins to get to this point in the Aussie have been pretty impressive. Not in the sense that he's had a crazy upset or two, but that he's played a solid level of opponent every round pretty much with Nakashima, PCB, Musetti, Monfils, and now Sonego. Next up is different obviously. He's got the big boss in Jannik Sinner and is a big underdog (+875), but hey he's done it before…. 

Just ignore the four head to head matches they had since that one where Sinner hasn't dropped a set. Or the fact that he's a legit alien on the court against anyone alive right now. 

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Not important! In all seriousness if he's gonna pull this off he's gotta reach a bunch of tiebreaks and have his serve be the most locked in it can be. That still might not be enough. This was the first set of their last meeting. 

I don't know how Shelton could have played better and it didn't matter. 6-4 Sinner. He's just that good. 

Either way, Ben is building his game up at a rate that is very exciting. Soon enough he'll be in the top 10 and his path to get deep into slams will be even easier. Carlos is a target to get upset in slams at the moment, Novak isn't getting any younger, Zverev is the king of choke artists, Medvedev doesn't have it anymore, and Sinner could be looking at a one year ban in April. This shit has the potential to be wide open and Americans like Shelton, Fritz, and Paul have a chance to get the damn thing done. Someone is going to break through and Ben might be that dude.