Seventeen meetings with the top 3, seventeen defeats. The eighteenth took 4hr 28min and ended at 3.33am on a service winner clocked at 235 km/h. Shelton is also the first American to beat Alcaraz at a Grand Slam, after fourteen attempts.
Our pundit Jean-Pol Vandenbroeck saw all of it coming, as he does every week.
It’s very simple. Seventeen defeats means one thing: the eighteenth was mathematically done. I said it back in January, go and check. Not word for word, but the spirit was there. In 80 % of cases, and I’m being kind, the man who loses seventeen times wins the next one. That’s the law of streaks, nobody ever listens to me on that.
We pointed out that Alcaraz had won three major titles in his last four Grand Slams and stood at 31 wins and one defeat in those tournaments since Roland-Garros 2025. Jean-Pol did not blink.
Careful, I’m not saying the opposite of what I said. I’m clarifying. A player at 31-1 is a player who is going to lose, obviously, it’s wear and tear. Me, in Kitzbühel, in ’92, I’m serving for the match at one in the morning against a future top 10. Well, the tie-break, I win it. Mind you, the context was different, there was no super tie-break back then. And that is why nobody ever calls me onto a panel.
The rest of the file bends less easily: this is Alcaraz’s second defeat in a five-setter, his record in the format now fifteen wins and two losses, the other loss coming against Matteo Berrettini in the third round of the Australian Open.
Shelton now plays Frances Tiafoe in the semi-finals, so an American will be in Friday’s final. The last American men’s singles title at the US Open was Andy Roddick’s in 2003. Shelton leads Tiafoe 3-1 overall, the two having shared their New York meetings in 2023 and 2024.
It’s true, we checked: DH Les Sports+.
