Frances Tiafoe won nine of his 13 second-serve points in the first set on Friday night. He won 11 of the next 39, and by the time he stood at 5-6 in the fourth, the shot that had carried him through a fortnight was gone. Ben Shelton beat him 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 7-5 in three hours and 17 minutes on Arthur Ashe Stadium to reach his first Grand Slam final.
For a set it was Tiafoe’s match, and the margins were not close. He made three unforced errors to Shelton’s 14, kept the rallies in front of him and waited for the younger man to miss. Shelton double-faulted at 4-4, the only opening Tiafoe needed. He broke, held at love and took the set 6-4.
What changed was the size of Shelton’s first serve and where it left Tiafoe standing. Shelton finished with 20 aces against three double faults and landed 75 percent of his first serves, a rate that rarely survives that kind of pace. Tiafoe landed 57 percent of his, and every miss handed Shelton a second ball to step into. Shelton won 62 percent of the points played against it. Tiafoe’s forehand, asked to defend from deeper behind the baseline with each passing game, went first. Shelton took the second and third sets 6-3, breaking four times and losing his own serve once.
The third set closed with the longest game of the night. Shelton needed four break points and more than 15 minutes to convert the last of them, and the two opened the fourth with another marathon on Shelton’s serve. Eleven consecutive holds followed, several of them survived only after fighting off break chances. Serving at 5-6 to force a tiebreak, Tiafoe fell to 0-40. Shelton missed the first match point. The second ended on a Tiafoe double fault into the net.
Before play, a giant American flag was unfurled across the court to mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. What followed was the first Grand Slam semifinal contested by two Black American men. Shelton, at 23, became the first Black American man to reach a US Open final since Arthur Ashe in 1972, and the first to reach any major final since MaliVai Washington at Wimbledon in 1996.
Tiafoe is now 0-3 in Grand Slam semifinals, all three at Flushing Meadows, in 2022, 2024 and 2026. The last two came against fellow Americans; Taylor Fritz beat him here two years ago, a night that sits inside the 23-year American drought both men were playing to end. He had needed five sets to get past Alex Michelsen in the quarterfinals. “Served really well tonight, which made it really tough on me,” Tiafoe said of Shelton afterwards.
Shelton, who beat Carlos Alcaraz in five sets in the quarterfinals to end the defending champion’s title run, put the last two matches down to a change in himself rather than his game. “I’ve grown up. I’m more mature. More focused,” he said, before admitting he had spent part of the night spotting famous faces in the stands.
He plays Alexander Zverev on Sunday at 2 p.m. ET. Zverev has won all five of their previous meetings, none of them at a major. No American man has won a Grand Slam singles title since Andy Roddick at the 2003 US Open.
