After making his way to the second week of the Australian Open, Ben Shelton is also heading there at the US Open.
Shelton hadn't played that well leading up to the US Open, making some wonder what kind of effort he'd put forward at his home Slam. It's been going well so far, with a solid win over Pedro Cachin in the 1st round. He followed that up with a reasonable effort against Dominic Thiem, though that match was cut short by the Austrian's retirement.
His 3rd round match against Aslan Karatsev was a good one as well. Uplifted by the crowd, Shelton overcame a spirited Karatsev who didn't serve that well but played fairly decent for his standards. The Russian is capable of a good effort but also blasting many errors. He was pretty stable for much of today but became more erratic as the match went on.
Shelton put forward a typical Shelton performance. The serve worked really well for him in all sets, giving him plenty of free points. The first one saw him blast 11 winners and no unforced errors to win it. The second set saw him miss quite a bit more, giving Karatsev chances that he would take.
The 3rd set was a return to the first set as Shelton once again dominated from the baseline, quickly cruising to the finish line. By then, Karatsev started to miss quite a bit more, which hastened his defeat. His erratic nature showed up in grand fashion in the final set.
He had 18 unforced errors in the last two sets compared to 10 in the first two sets, and obviously, that wasn't good enough. Not when he had Shelton on the other side of the net, who finished with 38 winners, though 26 of them were aces.
The final score was 6-4 3-6 6-2 6-0 for the American who is looking very dangerous on these courts.
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