Ben Shelton has revealed why he was full of life in his post-match victory celebration after beating Francisco Cerundolo.
Shelton, playing on home soil at the Indian Wells Masters, needed every ounce of energy to defeat the hard-hitting Argentine in a thriller. He needed an hour and four minutes to win the first set in a tie-break on his third set point.
Cerundolo responded by breaking the impenetrable Shelton serve in the eighth game of the second set and serving to 15 to level the score. The third set was fought to the wire, with neither of them dropping serve until the tiebreak, which was also pretty tight.
It was the 22nd seed who blinked at 5-5, and Shelton effectively took the next point on his serve to win the match. After the near three-hour epic came to a conclusion, Shelton turned around and roared before gesturing to the closest crowd to stay silent.
The American lefty has since taken to social media to explain his exuberant and overzealous post-match celebrations. Shelton revealed that he was heckled by a section of the crowd during the match, presumably Argentineans.
"Volume up... the heckling was insane in this match. That's why I reacted after match pt [point]... but we got thru it."
The 21-year-old reshared a video captured by a fan from the stands showing the alleged heckling incident, which can be seen below. Shelton's reward for beating Cerundolo is that he will play in the fourth round of Indian Wells for the first time.
But he will have the ultimate test when he takes on third seed Jannik Sinner, who hasn't lost a match in 2024 and is already in pursuit of his third title of the season. Their head-to-head is tied at 1-1, with both matches being very closely contested encounters.
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