Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton: A Historic US Open Semifinal
NEW YORK — The name on the front of Arthur Ashe Stadium is usually backdrop. A landmark. A meeting point for fans trying to find each other in the crush of a night session at the US Open.
Not this week.
With Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton set to walk out under those giant letters for a US Open semifinal, the name has become the story again. The stadium Ashe never lived to see now stages the kind of moment he spent a lifetime trying to make possible.
A night Ashe dreamed of
Ashe didn’t just break barriers. He smashed them and then made sure no one could quietly slide the pieces back into place. He fought so that young Black Americans would have a permanent stake in a sport that once shut them out.
On Friday night, two of those heirs meet for a place in the final.
The winner will be the first Black American man to reach a US Open singles final since Ashe himself in 1972, and the first Black American man in any Grand Slam singles final since MaliVai Washington at Wimbledon in 1996. The rankings will tell their own story when the tournament ends: Shelton will rise to No. 4, and Tiafoe is guaranteed at least No. 8, with a chance to match Shelton at No. 4 if he lifts the trophy on Sunday.
Washington, who carried the baton for a generation almost on his own, doesn’t bother to play down the scale of it.
"I think it’s an exciting time," he told USA TODAY Sports. "If one of them goes on to win the US Open, it will be the greatest sports story certainly of this year, and certainly of this decade. I think it shows how the growth and progression of tennis is going in the right direction. They are two great representatives of what tennis can be and what American tennis can be.
"This match and the finals will likely be the two most watched tennis matches in a long, long time."
A new picture on tennis’ biggest stage
For Coco Gauff, the 2023 US Open champion who fell in this year’s semifinals to Elena Rybakina, the scene unfolding in men’s tennis still feels almost surreal.
"Especially on the men’s side, I never thought I’d have the chance to see an all-Black semifinal between the guys in my lifetime," Gauff said. "Even growing up, just look at who was playing. I just never thought that would be able to happen. To have also me in the semis, I think it’s really cool. I have so much respect for both Ben and Frances. I’m just rooting for a good match. Hopefully, whoever wins can bring it home."
For decades, that kind of tableau existed almost exclusively on the women’s side. From Althea Gibson to Venus and Serena Williams, Black women became the sport’s most visible trailblazers while the men’s game waited, and waited, for the next wave Ashe once predicted.
Even Ashe believed more were coming. After winning the 1968 US Open, the 1970 Australian Open and Wimbledon in 1975, he retired in 1980 due to heart issues and looked ahead with optimism.
"What we need is an American Yannick Noah," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1988, pointing to the charismatic Frenchman who had won Roland Garros in 1983. "In many respects, I wasn’t a very good role model. We need someone who’s got flair and can play in-your-face tennis. And he should comport himself like Julius Erving."
The sport never found that figure quickly. Washington’s 1996 Wimbledon run, ending in a straight-sets loss to Richard Krajicek, felt like a breakthrough that never quite turned into a flood. The Williams sisters, turning professional in the mid-1990s and storming into major finals before the decade was out, shifted the center of gravity toward the women’s game.
Now, with Tiafoe and Shelton, the men’s side finally has its own marquee moment.
One night isn’t enough
Washington, now 57, knows exactly what this semifinal represents. He also knows it can’t be the end of the story.
"I don’t believe that just one match or one final or even this occasion, all of a sudden you are going to see this flood of players coming on to the tour," he said. "To come on to the tour, it’s a 15-year process. If there is not an infrastructure to bring up these young players, to encourage and to impact these young players for an extended period of time, there will not be an increase of interest in the sport."
He talks about layers: junior tennis, college tennis, the slow grind of the lower professional ranks. It’s not just about inspiration. It’s about courts, coaching, money, patience.
"Though this match is extremely significant and it plays a role and it will be very positive for getting Black kids, but not just Black kids, but white kids, Hispanic kids, Asian kids, Native kids, it will play an important role in just getting more involved and interested in the sport," Washington said.
His own path underlines the point. Washington picked up a racket at 5, cracked the tour in 1989, and made his name with an upset of No. 2 Ivan Lendl at the Volvo International in 1990. The next match in that same tournament? A three-set loss to Bryan Shelton — Ben’s father.
The lineage is not theoretical. It’s right there in the draw sheets.
"You gotta be obsessed with this thing"
Tiafoe knows the distance between a kid with a dream and a professional career. The gap is measured in early mornings, long bus rides, and a lot of doors that stay closed.
He found his opening at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Maryland, where he trained as a teenager and turned raw talent into a profession.
"Try to reach out to one of the local clubs where they give you a chance to play," Tiafoe said. "And then once you get in that door, man, just come in there hungry, especially when you're young. You gotta be obsessed with this thing, man, because tennis is such a repetitive sport. You gotta really get them reps in. But mostly, you have to love it."
Love and obsession are one part. Structure is the other.
Martin Blackman, CEO of the Junior Tennis Champions Center and former senior director for talent identification and development at the USTA, points back to the pre-pandemic model as a blueprint: bringing kids into local, regional and national camps, educating families, drilling fundamentals by the time players reach 12 or 13.
He sees Friday night as more than a spectacle.
"It’s something to celebrate: two amazing players, two amazing representatives of sport. But it’s two guys who will inspire thousands of kids to pick up rackets and try our sport. It's a watershed moment," Blackman said.
Washington, who climbed as high as No. 11 in the world and won four singles titles, strips it down to the brutal math of elite sport.
"You can work your butt off for years, and that doesn’t guarantee you will become a professional tennis player," he said. "You have to have the infrastructure and the passion. A lot of things go into it, you just have to give yourself the best chance."
Seeing it to believe it
Taylor Townsend, fresh off completing a career Grand Slam in doubles with her US Open title alongside Katerina Siniakova, believes the real surge is still ahead.
"You only need one," she said. "You need somebody to be able to see that it's possible, that you can. I've said this where if you don't see it, then it's harder to believe it, but also, you have to be a certain type of person to want to take on that feat and say, Well, I'm going to carve this path for myself or for someone else or for the others who come after me."
"So for me, I'm so proud to be able to click on the TV and watch Frances and Ben, and one of them is going to be able to be in a Grand Slam final, and that's a beautiful thing. You know, Robin (Montgomery), myself, you know, it's been Coco, it's been a phenomenal US Open for people of color, and just being able to show people, like, it's possible, you know?"
That word — possible — is what Friday night really trades in. Not guarantees, not overnight revolutions. Possibility.
Ashe understood that better than anyone. He warned against thinking too small, too short-term, when he talked about where the sport was heading.
"For some people, the future is next year," he told the L.A. Times. "But for me it’s this afternoon."
On this particular afternoon, and this particular night, the future he imagined walks out under his name, rackets in hand, ready to decide which one of them will step into a Grand Slam final and change the picture of men’s tennis again.
