Ben Shelton was left amazed after being told he would need to pay $300 per hour to have work done on his car at a service shop.
Shelton is enjoying some time off after a long and grueling season. 2024 was Shelton's most consistent year on the ATP Tour, with the American competing well from start to finish.
The 22-year-old's sole title this year came on clay at the Houston Open. In the final, he defeated Frances Tiafoe, who was recently pictured socializing with Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, in three sets.
Shelton's other final was at last month's Swiss Indoors in Basel. The huge-serving Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard defeated him in the final, Shelton said he felt like killing himself during the match because of how good his opponent's serve was throughout.
Other solid results for Shelton throughout 2024 include reaching the quarterfinal of the Cincinnati Open and the fourth round of Wimbledon. The American will end this season as the world's No. 21.
Hopefully, Shelton is refreshing ahead of the new season. The grueling nature of the tennis schedule means not refreshing mentally during the few weeks players get off can be damaging to them at a later stage.
However, he was left bemused after an attempted trip to a service shop to get work done on his car. Shelton could scarcely believe it when told the price to complete whatever he needed on his vehicle.
"This service shop just told me their hourly labor rate is $300/hour when I asked them to do some work on my car. So I said do you have an application I wanna apply for a job. Crazy world out here."
Although Shelton did not specify what work he wanted to be done on the car, that hourly rate is obviously far above what would be expected. The American did not reveal in his social media post whether he paid that significant amount per hour.
One account responded to Shelton with a calculation of the money he earned per hour in 2024 based on the time he spent on the court during his matches throughout the season.
"Excuse my quick napkin math, but in 2024, Ben Shelton spent 130 hours, 26 minutes on court and made $2.2 million. That's an average hourly rate of $17,000. So sure, yes, crazy world out here."
This is not a fair comparison, though. Most of the time players spend working is outside of matches to improve their game and in the hours before matches preparing to be ready. There is also a significant amount of traveling.
Those calculations done by the online user do not disprove Shelton's feelings that the service shop wanted to charge him an outrageous amount. The shop might have known about the 22-year-old being a professional tennis player and tried to take advantage of that.
Another recent story involving a tennis player's car involved Diego Schwartzman, who had his vehicle robbed while he practiced. The Argentinian expressed annoyance about having so many belongings taken afterward on social media.