Ben Shelton battles to milestone 100th win of career with victory over Cobolli in Toronto

Ben Shelton has already hit some big milestones over the last month and a half on the ATP rankings, making his Top 10 debut during the grass-court season and then hitting new career-highs of No. 9, No. 8 and No. 7 over the last three weeks.

And on Sunday night in Toronto he hit another kind of milestone, battling past Flavio Cobolli in the fourth round of the Masters 1000 event, 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (1), for the 100th win of his career.

The 22-year-old is the fourth man born since 2002 to hit that number, and the first U.S. man born in 2002 or later to do it.

MEN BORN SINCE 2002 WITH 100+ CAREER WINS (tour-level):

• 257: Carlos Alcaraz [born in 2003]
• 163: Holger Rune [born in 2003]
• 158: Lorenzo Musetti [born in 2002]
• 100: Ben Shelton [born in 2002]

Almost half of Shelton's career wins have come in the last 12 months alone—45 of them to be exact, as he went 16-9 from this day until the end of the year last year, and he's now 29-16 this year after his latest victory over Cobolli on Sunday night.

After Shelton snuck out a 51-minute first set on Sunday, Cobolli started to take control of the match, breaking in the third game of the second set en route to tying it up at a set apiece, and then again in the fifth game of the third set, eventually finding himself up 5-3 in the decider, even serving for it at 5-4.

From there it was all Shelton though, as the American won three straight games for a 6-5 lead, brought up his first match point on Cobolli's serve in that game, and then—after the Italian held—stormed through the tie-break in under five minutes to complete the two-hour, 24-minute comeback victory.

"Tonight was a long way back with Flavio serving for the match," he said in his on-court interview. "I'm really happy with this win. It was a fight 'til the end. A really difficult match, and I'm pretty tired right now, but I'm glad we gave you guys a bit of a show."

Shelton is now through to the fourth Masters 1000 quarterfinal of his career, having previously gotten this far at Shanghai in 2023, Cincinnati in 2024 and Indian Wells earlier this year.

He's never made it further at this level, though.

Standing between the American and his first Masters 1000 semifinal will be Alex de Minaur, a 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 winner earlier in the day against another American, Frances Tiafoe.

Shelton and De Minaur will play each other for the first time.