A FEW DAYS before Christmas, and a few days before Ben Shelton boarded a plane for the start of the 2024 tennis season and its first major at the Australian Open, he went over to his parents’ house in Gainesville, Florida, to grab something from his old bedroom.
While he was rummaging through his closet, the 21-year-old found a tennis racket signed by Dominic Thiem, a hard-hitting Austrian who won the 2020 US Open.
Shelton had won the racket a few years ago in a contest at the Miami Open, a tournament he regularly attended as a kid.
Grinning, he brought the racket to his dad. “Remember this?”
Bryan Shelton, his dad, coach and a former tennis pro himself, smiled. “Yeah, I do.”
Four months earlier in New York, Ben Shelton beat Thiem during his magical run at the 2023 US Open. With mighty serves, delicate volleys, blistering forehands and boisterous celebrations, Shelton thrilled the American audience until he suffered a chippy loss to eventual champion Novak Djokovic in the semifinals. But Shelton, who became the youngest American man to reach the US Open semis since Michael Chang in 1992, rejuvenated hope that an American man could be the last one standing on the sport’s biggest stages.
In the blink of an eye, Shelton had big-footed his way into the role of America’s top contender. He was already 11 when he told his dad he wanted to pursue the sport seriously. After winning the NCAA title at Florida as a 19-year-old sophomore, he turned pro with a world ranking of 547th. Until 2023, he had never ventured outside the United States to play tennis. Today he is ranked 16th in the world, and most pundits are still calling him an “upstart” and talking about the “upside” of the 6-foot-4, 195-pound lefty.
“It’s just surreal, you know?” Bryan says.
Shelton’s next chance to become the first American man to win a Grand Slam since Andy Roddick in 2003 — Shelton hadn’t yet celebrated his first birthday — begins Sunday in Melbourne. It’s worth remembering that in his only other Australian Open appearance, Shelton advanced to the quarterfinals as a 20-year-old rookie before falling to fellow American Tommy Paul.
Seeded for the first time at a major — 16th — he faces a tricky first-round challenge in former top-10 player Roberto Bautista Agut. So the…
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