'You Can Give Him Challenge': Shelton Shows Great Sportsmanship During Korda Loss

| by Evita Mueller

Ben Shelton is gathering up sympathies in the tennis community, whether it's with hanging up phones or just showing good sportsmanship.

While he might be most famous for hanging up phones, especially in New York, Ben Shelton has much more to offer in tennis. The American is one of the more exciting young players on the ATP Tour, which we didn't think it was possible after the emergence of Carlos Alcaraz.

How could any player be even more exciting than him but somehow, Shelton seems to be the player everybody is talking about now, even with the Spaniard being embroiled in a heated battle for number one in the rankings with Novak Djokovic.

Shelton's last match came against Sebastian Korda at the 2023 Shanghai Masters, and it was a good one, three sets, a lot of aces, but not a lot of 'hanging up'. Korda won the match, but the detail everybody is seemingly talking about is what happened in the first set tiebreak.

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It was a huge one with 22 points that went Shelton's way 12-10, but at the start of it, the young American demonstrated good sportsmanship towards his fellow America. Korda challenged a serve by Shelton however the umpire didn't hear or see Korda raise his hand. By the time the umpire finally noticed, a bit of time expired, and he wanted to move on because the challenge was late.

It wasn't really late, but he didn't notice, and he admitted that to his credit. Shelton then stepped up and defended Korda, saying that he saw him challenge the call immediately, to which the umpire asked him whether he wanted to allow the challenge, and Shelton agreed.

"You can give him the challenge"

Shelton to the umpire

The serve was obviously good so there was no harm done, and Shelton likely knew that however, he did a nice thing, and it needs to be described as such. Check out the situation below.

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