Ben Shelton Surges Past Tallon Griekspoor in U.S. Open Opener

Under the lights of Arthur Ashe Stadium, Ben Shelton looked nothing like a man chasing history. Not for half an hour, anyway.

The eighth seed opened his U.S. Open campaign with a ragged, nervy stretch that left the crowd stunned and Tallon Griekspoor in full control. Shelton sprayed 14 unforced errors, tossed in two double faults and managed to hold serve just once as the Dutchman ripped through the first set 6-1 in under 30 minutes.

For a player eyeing a breakthrough as the first American men’s champion in New York since 2003, it was a brutal start.

Then the match turned.

Shelton, who arrived in New York buoyed by a successful Canadian Open title defence despite a disappointing year at the Grand Slams, finally settled. The serve that has become his calling card began to bite. The forehand stopped flying long and started finding corners. The footwork sharpened.

“I started off a little bit nervous tonight, but I found my rhythm at some point through the second set,” he said afterward, a fair summary of the swing in momentum.

The second set became a role reversal. Griekspoor, fresh off a headline-grabbing upset of top seed Alexander Zverev in Montreal earlier this month, suddenly found himself pushed back, rushed, and stripped of the patterns he prefers. Shelton broke three times, dictating rallies with aggressive first strikes and backing them up with cleaner shot selection. The 6-1 scoreline this time belonged to the American, and the match stood level.

Griekspoor, as Shelton acknowledged, doesn’t usually offer much rhythm. His attacking style, flat off both wings, had made life miserable for the 23-year-old early on.

“Obviously, a lot of credit to Tallon, he's a good player to play, he doesn’t give you a lot of rhythm,” Shelton said. “He has an attacking game style and I found things really difficult for the first set tonight.”

Those difficulties resurfaced in a tense third set. Both men held firm on serve, the exchanges tightening, the margins shrinking. Shelton’s improved first-serve percentage kept him out of trouble, but Griekspoor refused to fade, leaning into his returns and stepping inside the baseline whenever he saw a second serve.

The pressure built and, inevitably, the set went to a tiebreak.

That was where Griekspoor blinked. The Dutchman’s aggression tipped into recklessness, and his serve – so solid in the early going – deserted him at the worst possible time. Errors crept in, and Shelton, now playing with a calm that had been nowhere in sight in the opening set, seized on every mistake.

Griekspoor’s sixth double fault of the night handed Shelton the tiebreak 7-3 and with it a two-sets-to-one lead. The match felt decided in that moment.

Shelton made sure it was.

He burst out in the fourth set like a man who had no interest in a five-set grind. The American raced to a 4-0 lead, hammering serves, stepping into returns and taking time away from Griekspoor, who looked increasingly deflated. The Dutchman’s earlier authority from the baseline evaporated as Shelton’s confidence surged.

From there, the top American in the men’s draw never loosened his grip. He closed out the fourth set 6-2, wrapping up a 1-6 6-1 7-6(3) 6-2 victory that looked far more comfortable on the scoreboard than it had felt in those opening, jittery games.

Shelton is still hunting his first Grand Slam title, still learning how to carry the weight of expectation in these arenas. On Monday night, he absorbed the early shock, recalibrated, and imposed his game on a dangerous opponent who had arrived in New York with every reason to believe another upset was possible.

Next comes Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz in the second round, a step up in serving power and experience. For Shelton, whose ambitions stretch far beyond just surviving week one, that is exactly the kind of test he needs under these lights.