Ben Shelton "needed something supernatural" to escape Taylor Fritz and win Dallas

What separates tennis’s Top 2 American men? Judging by the evidence from Dallas on Sunday, very little. A go-for-broke second serve here, an unexpected inside-out backhand there, a possibly-mishit forehand that landed in just the right spot on championship point.

Normally, it’s the player who maintains a high level for longer who wins a match, and the player who has wilder swings in form who eventually falls short. Not this time. Taylor Fritz won more points than Ben Shelton overall, and kept his game steadier over the course of three sets and nearly two hours. But in the end it was Shelton, after a bleary-eyed start, who pulled off the more surprising and spectacular shots exactly when he needed them.

A close contest between these two was always in the cards. Fritz and Shelton came in ranked No. 1 and 2 in the States, and No. 7 and 9 in the world. One of their two previous encounters had gone down to the wire, and their roads to the final here were similarly strenuous. Fritz won two matches in final-set tiebreakers, while Shelton won his quarterfinal 6-4 in the third, and his semi 7-6 in the third. The quick indoor courts in Dallas meant that there would likely be few chances to break. Even the crowd was pretty evenly split between these two home-country favorites.

I tried to be a competitor through and through." Ben Shelton

Fritz got the first punch in right away. He broke in the second game, won his first 28 first-serve points, and ran out a breezy opening set 6-3. He came a point or two away from breaking the second set open as well. Three times Fritz reached 30-30 on Shelton’s serve, and twice he had break point, but Shelton dug down and found the serves he needed to stay alive.

“Fritz was playing very good tennis and I was struggling a lot with what he was throwing at me,” Shelton said. “I tried to be a competitor through and through.”

Finally, at 2-2 in the second, Shelton’s ground strokes began to back up his serve. He won another crucial 30-30 point with an inside-out forehand winner that inspired his first serious celebratory yell of the day.  Three games later, with Fritz serving at 3-4, Shelton uncorked a forehand for 0-15, a backhand for 0-30, and a running forehand pass for 0-40. A few minutes later, he had the second set, and the fans had what they wanted—a decider for the title.

“Once I get a set, I feel pretty confident,” Shelton said later. “Once I’m able to sink my teeth in and feel like I have some sort of rhythm, I just start to loosen up and find my level.”

Both men rose to the moment and dueled through one of the best sets of 2026 so far. The rallies were long, but the shots were fast and varied. Each swung for the fences, and went deep into his repertoire. And each was inspired by the other. Shelton broke Fritz at 1-1 with a blazing forehand winner, but Fritz broke right back with a great get and a backwards-leaping smash. Between them, they had 30 aces in the match, and their winner-to-error ratio was a combined plus-24.

“It was a fun match to be a part of, up until the end." Taylor Fritz

For all of that, the conclusion looked like it would be anti-climactic. Serving at 4-5, Shelton made a couple of missteps to go down 15-40. Would a match this good really end in such a straightforward way? No, because Shelton immediately corrected himself, in typically brazen fashion. At 15-40, he threw down a 120-mph second serve, charged the net, and closed with a smash. At 30-40, he shocked Fritz by taking a backhand and, perhaps for the first time all match, smacking it inside out. Fritz could only flail futilely.

From there, Shelton wouldn’t be stopped. He broke Fritz at 5-5, and went up 40-0 at 6-5. Now it was Fritz’s turn to make a miracle last stand, and he was almost pulled it off. He saved the first two match points; on the third, he tracked down a series of big Shelton ground strokes. Finally, a Shelton forehand semi-shanked off his strings and landed short—an inch too short for Fritz to return.

“It was a fun match to be a part of, up until the end,” a smirking Fritz said, before praising Shelton for playing “the big points and important moments really well.”

As for Shelton, he praised the heavens for seeing him through.

“I thank God, because I needed something supernatural to end up winning this tournament with all the holes that I was in,” he said. “This is one my favorite atmospheres I ever played in.”

A great match, and a great atmosphere—but will it end up being more than that? Is Shelton in the process of surpassing Fritz as the best American man? In most cases, I wouldn’t read much into a result where the loser had three match points. But this did feel like a significant victory for Shelton. He’s five years younger and less experienced than Fritz, who has historically found a way to survive tight matches like this. But here, at the moment of truth, it was Shelton who lifted his game above Fritz’s, and showed that he has weapons that his countryman can’t easily counter.

All in all, it was a fine warm-up for next month’s Sunshine Double. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait long for the rematch.