Ben Shelton outplayed Arthur Fils in two sets to reach the 2024 Swiss Indoors final in Basel, only his third career final on the ATP Tour.
Fils might have been seeded lower than his American opponent at this tournament, but he's been an incredible force at the ATP 500 tournaments this year.
In fact, he was on a 13-match winning streak at ATP 500 tournaments when coming into this match, a feat that also brought him to win the ATP 500 Bonus Pool, out of which he took out $615,000 for being the best-performing player at the ATP 500 tournaments in 2024.
Fils was the best player at the ATP 500 level in 2024, and if Shelton wanted to play another career final, he had to beat his good friend. The two are known to have a good relationship, but as fierce competitors, they were able to put that aside in the Swiss city.
Heading into the match, both recorded some impressive wins. While Shelton outplayed Andrey Rublev, who was the top seed at the event, his French opponent eliminated Stefanos Tsitsipas.
Both are great servers, and it showed early in this match. In the first six games, they lost only four combined points on their serves in total, so logically, the score was locked at 3-3.
But even though Shelton could continue his serving dominance, winning his fourth and fifth service games of the set to 15 and to love, Fils stumbled, allowing to break points in the eighth game of the set.
Those two break points were everything that the American player needed to break Fils' serve and win the first set of the match 6-3. But the two-time ATP 500 champion in 2024 wasn't ready to give up.
Fils brought his best level in the second set of the match but so did his opponent. Both were trading blows from the baseline, but especially from the serve.
Only in one game one of the players lost more than one point on the serve, with no break points on offer during the entirety of the second set. That meant there was only one way to decide the winner of the second set.
It was the tie-break. Determined to turn the match around, Fils entered it in the best possible way, winning the first five points of the tie-break. He was smiling towards the box, probably already seeing himself in the third set.
He probably only grew in confidence when the scoreboard showed 6-3, and he had three set points to end the match. But that wouldn't be enough. Shelton made it 6-6, and despite allowing two more set points, he leveled the score at 9-9.
Shelton was just the better player at the end of the match, and his hard-fought win in the epic second-set tie-break proved that he deserved to win this match, as he triumphed 6-3, 7-6(9) to reach the 2024 Swiss Indoors final.
It will be his third career final, and so far, he has a 100% record in the Tour-level finals. He won his first title in Tokyo last year, and this year, he triumphed at the Houston Open.
This time, he will take on the winner of the match between the fourth-seeded Holger Rune from Denmark and another Frenchman, Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, in the final of the tournament.
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