Shelton Bests Tiafoe, Setting Up First Slam Final vs. Zverev | US Open 2026

Beginning with the, the headliner from this incredible Friday evening, Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, All-American semifinal, electric atmosphere.

I thought the two delivered with a pretty phenomenal match.

Really thought it was a great watch and, uh, a well-played match by both men.

It was Frances Tiafoe taking the opening set with a very clear game plan in my view.

"We're gonna play boring." Frances, in the past, has struggled a little bit to play boring at times.

Gets, gets a little impatient, wants to kinda make something happen.

Pl- play, you know, a drop shot or force a net rush or inject some pace into the rally.

If, if you look at the first set that Tiafoe played, the plan was pretty clear.

"Let's play into Ben's backhand.

Let's do it diligently.

Let's do it patiently.

Let's not get tired of doing it.

Let's just stay there." And it worked.

He got the misses out of that Shelton backhand wing.

Different to how, like, Carlos Alcaraz was playing it.

Carlos was playing through Ben's wing but then attacking off of it rather quickly, not necessarily staying there, right? He was getting to the Shelton backhand and then trying to attack off of the Shelton backhand, and just wasn't knocking down as many of those attacking opportunities as he would want.

Some of them were, were there.

Like, some of them were pretty sound shot selection, green light balls.

Maybe some of them were forced.

But Tiafoe, Tiafoe approached it differently.

He was going, you know, volume of balls.

Unforced errors end, end, in the first set ended up being 14 to three, obviously with Tiafoe only making three and Ben making 14.

So for Frances, it was really about First of all, very low event tennis in terms of the errors.

He, keeping the mistakes to a minimum to a very ex- impressive degree, which is something that I've talked about a lot.

I think when Frances is actually at his best, like this is one of the main things that makes him tough to beat, is he does have the capacity to really keep the mistakes to a minimum, and he certainly did it in the opening set.

Beginning with the, the headliner from this incredible Friday evening, Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, All-American semifinal, electric atmosphere.

I thought the two delivered with a pretty phenomenal match.

Really thought it was a great watch and, uh, a well-played match by both men.

It was Frances Tiafoe taking the opening set with a very clear game plan in my view.

"We're gonna play boring." Frances, in the past, has struggled a little bit to play boring at times.

Gets, gets a little impatient, wants to kinda make something happen.

Pl- play, you know, a drop shot or force a net rush or inject some pace into the rally.

If, if you look at the first set that Tiafoe played, the plan was pretty clear.

"Let's play into Ben's backhand.

Let's do it diligently.

Let's do it patiently.

Let's not get tired of doing it.

Let's just stay there." And it worked.

He got the misses out of that Shelton backhand wing.

Different to how, like, Carlos Alcaraz was playing it.

Carlos was playing through Ben's wing but then attacking off of it rather quickly, not necessarily staying there, right? He was getting to the Shelton backhand and then trying to attack off of the Shelton backhand, and just wasn't knocking down as many of those attacking opportunities as he would want.

Some of them were, were there.

Like, some of them were pretty sound shot selection, green light balls.

Maybe some of them were forced.

But Tiafoe, Tiafoe approached it differently.

He was going, you know, volume of balls.

Unforced errors end, end, in the first set ended up being 14 to three, obviously with Tiafoe only making three and Ben making 14.

So for Frances, it was really about First of all, very low event tennis in terms of the errors.

He, keeping the mistakes to a minimum to a very ex- impressive degree, which is something that I've talked about a lot.

I think when Frances is actually at his best, like this is one of the main things that makes him tough to beat, is he does have the capacity to really keep the mistakes to a minimum, and he certainly did it in the opening set.