Ben Shelton could have been facing a pretty grim prospect at the start of the 2024 season, but some good performances late in the year made it a non-issue.
Rankings on the ATP Tour sort of determine how the player's career goes indirectly. Take the example of Ben Shelton who won some ATP Challenger tournaments late in 2022 to break into the Top 100 of the ATP Rankings.
The American had a clear goal when he signed up for those back-to-back Challengers. He wanted to earn enough points to enter the Australian Open draw directly. He succeeded, and what happened?
He had a breakout run at the Australian Open, which started what became a sensational debut year for the youngster. Now take a second and imagine if he hadn't played those challenger events.
His career would have gone differently, and while it wouldn't have been a catastrophe, it might have cost him months of valuable development as a player. He struggled immensely over the summer, but that ultimately made him a better player, allowing him to advance to the US Open semi-final.
That run prepared him for what would happen in Tokyo, where he won his maiden trophy. All of that ensured him another year on the ATP Tour. How? Well, if none of that happened, he would have faced the prospect of losing a good chunk of his points at the Australian Open.
That would have seen him drop on the rankings and made it much harder for him to enter events directly. Obviously, that would have changed the trajectory of his season and have an impact on his career as well.
Out of his 2215 points, the American earned 720 points for the US Open semifinal, and additional 500 points for winning in Tokyo. That's 1220 points of his total, which ensured that he'll get another season with a high ranking.
Without those 1220 points, and possibly dropping additional 360 points from the Australian Open quarterfinal run, Shelton would have only 635 points to his name, ranking him around the world's Top 100, somewhere where he started last year, barely guaranteeing him entry into Grand Slams.
But like this, it's not a worry for the American, who can develop as a player thanks to the late-season boom. It's a fascinating sequence of events that has several crucial moments, and it all started this time last year.
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