Ben Shelton hit a 146 mph serve out wide at 3:33 in the morning and Carlos Alcaraz never touched it. It was the second ace Shelton had struck in four points of the deciding tiebreak, and it ended the latest match in US Open history.
The eighth seed beat the defending champion 6-7(5), 6-1, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6(10-7) in four hours and 28 minutes. The quarterfinal began just after 11 p.m. on Tuesday, because the three matches before it on Arthur Ashe Stadium had all gone the distance, and it finished in front of a crowd that had thinned but never stopped.
Nobody was broken in the fifth set. Both men held all twelve service games, and the only real threat came in the eighth, where Alcaraz faced three break points and saved all three. That left a 10-point match tiebreak, the third one played on Ashe that day. Shelton took the first mini-break on the third point and handed it back on the fifth with an unforced error.
Alcaraz took one of his own on the eighth, a Shelton forehand that flew wide, and led 5-3. He gave it back two points later with a forehand error of his own. From 5-5 Shelton served a 146 mph ace to move ahead 7-6, Alcaraz missed long to concede the chance to serve out at 8-7, and one more error and one more ace closed it.
The match turned much earlier than that. Alcaraz broke late in the first set, Shelton broke straight back to force the tiebreak, and Alcaraz took it 7-5. Then Shelton won the second set 6-1 playing the kind of tennis his critics have said he cannot sustain, staying in rallies rather than trying to end them, and moving Alcaraz rather than being moved. He carried it into a 6-3 third. Only in the fourth, when Alcaraz began adding weight to his groundstrokes, did Shelton start over-hitting, sending balls long, and lose a set 6-1 in the other direction.
Several long streaks ended in one night. Alcaraz had won 13 consecutive meetings with American men at the majors, a run that included a four-set win over Shelton in the fourth round at Roland Garros in 2025 and stretched across his whole Grand Slam career. He was also 15-1 in five-set matches and had won 14 in a row against left-handers, per CBS Sports. It was his first quarterfinal exit at a major since the 2025 Australian Open, and it snapped a run of four consecutive Grand Slam finals. This was his first tournament back after a wrist injury that kept him out roughly four months.
Shelton had lost all three previous meetings with Alcaraz. He is now in his third Grand Slam semifinal and his second at Flushing Meadows, having lost the 2023 semifinal to Novak Djokovic. “It’s always about the people in the crowd,” Shelton said on court afterwards, thanking a stadium that had stayed past three.
He plays Frances Tiafoe in the semifinals, an all-American last-four match that guarantees an American man a place in Sunday’s final. No American man has won a Grand Slam singles title since Andy Roddick at the 2003 US Open. Tiafoe reached the semifinals earlier on Tuesday by coming back from two sets down against Alex Michelsen, meaning both halves of the American semifinal were settled by five-set matches on the same day.
Related coverage: Ben Shelton profile · Carlos Alcaraz profile · US Open 2026 quarterfinals line-up and schedule
