Ben Shelton benefited from a wrong umpiring decision at the 2024 Swiss Indoors in Basel and subsequently responded to criticism he received after the incident.
Shelton's first match of the European indoor hardcourt season was against Tomas Martin Etcheverry in Basel. He defeated Etcheverry in their two previous meetings in 2024.
The 22-year-old played at the Ultimate Tennis Showdown in Frankfurt last week, winning the title with an impressive comeback in the final against the Frenchman Ugo Humbert on Sunday.
Luckily for Shelton, he got a chance to recover from those efforts in Frankfurt because his first contest at the Swiss Indoors was not scheduled until Tuesday. By contrast, Humbert played in the opening match on Centre Court on Monday.
Shelton hit out at the decision to make Humbert play the day after his Ultimate Tennis Showdown final. But the Frenchman still managed to triumph 6-4, 6-7, 7-5 against Jerome Kym, before losing narrowly to David Goffin in the next round.
The reasonable scheduling for his match was not the only thing that helped Shelton in the opening round against Etcheverry. He received some good fortune when an umpire awarded him a point that should have gone to his opponent.
As seen in the video below, Shelton hit a return back hard in Etcheverry's direction. The ball struck the Argentine's leg, causing him to fall to the ground.
However, Shelton's shot clearly bounced first and landed out, meaning Etcheverry was expecting to receive the point. Unfortunately for him, the umpire incorrectly thought the ball hit him without bouncing.
That mistake also gave Shelton two break points, and he took the first of those opportunities to take a 4-2 lead in the opening set. Etcheverry went on to lose the match 3-6, 4-6, only creating one break point during the two sets.
In an interview after the match, Shelton said he asked his team members, sitting at Etcheverry's side of the court, about the incident. They told him it looked like the ball hit Etcheverry first. The umpire and Shelton's team were wrong.
"Yeah, that's a tough moment and a bad call. If it hit the ground, I'm going to watch it after the match, not going to take your word for it, but I'll go watch it for myself and see what happened."
"I went to my team, who was kind of on that line, and I said ‘did you see what happened’? They said it looked like it hit his foot in the air. If they would have said it looked like it hit the ground I would've given him the point immediately, but not my place and I couldn't see the ball at all, obviously I was 20 feet behind my own baseline."
Shelton's distance from the incident did not stop accounts on social media from accusing him of cheating and claiming he knew the ball had bounced first. The American responded on Instagram, saying those people must think he has X-ray vision.
"You guys in the comments think I have X-ray vision to see through the net from 85 feet away."