US Open: Shelton tops Tiafoe for first Slam semifinal

Ben Shelton reached his first Grand Slam semifinal by edging Frances Tiafoe 6-2, 3-6, 7-6 (7), 6-2 at the US Open in a back-and-forth contest filled with huge hitting by both

New York: Ben Shelton is still just 20, still new to this whole professional tennis thing. He is equipped with a tremendously good serve, but don’t think he can’t come through in other ways when it matters the most.

On a muggy night in which, yes, he hit 14 aces but also hit 11 double-faults, Shelton used one blink-and-you-missed-it booming return to save a set point in the pivotal tiebreaker and reached his first Grand Slam semifinal by edging Frances Tiafoe 6-2, 3-6, 7-6 (7), 6-2 at the US Open in a back-and-forth contest filled with huge hitting by both.

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Shelton broke to begin the fourth and never looked back. The matchup, which began in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Tuesday evening and ended after midnight on Wednesday, was the first major quarterfinal between two African-American men in the Open era, which dates to 1968.

It was also the first US Open quarterfinal since 2005 between two men from the host country, which hasn’t claimed a Slam trophy in men’s singles since Andy Roddick won at Flushing Meadows two years prior to that. The crowd seemed to have a tough time deciding for whom to cheer, prodding both players at various points of the often even matchup. Shelton will face Novak Djokovic on Friday for a berth in the final.

Djokovic, a 36-year-old from Serbia, reached his record 47th Grand Slam semifinal, breaking a tie with Roger Federer for the most by a man, by defeating Taylor Fritz 6-1, 6-4, 6-4.

Both the unseeded Shelton and No. 10 seed Tiafoe, a 25-year-old from Maryland who was a semifinalist at Flushing Meadows a year ago, wore sleeveless muscle shirts. Shelton’s was mostly black with fuchsia down the left side; Tiafoe’s was green with a multi-colored mix of colors on the front that Coco Gauff described as “confetti.”

Both were soaked by sweat throughout, because although the temperature had slid from the 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) of the afternoon to about 82 F (28 C) by nighttime, the humidity rose to 70%.

Meanwhile, Coco Gauff knows what it takes to reach a Grand Slam final. Been there, done that. What she hasn’t experienced is winning a major championship. So her first trip to the semifinals at the US Open does not leave her satisfied at all, no matter how dominant the performance was that got her to that stage.

Gauff dealt just fine with the heat, the humidity and a big-hitting opponent to defeat Jelena Ostapenko 6-0, 6-2 on Tuesday, becoming the first American teenager to reach the final four at Flushing Meadows since Serena Williams in 2001.

“Even though (by) the semifinals, (in) theory, if you want to win, there’s two matches left, you can’t think like that,” the sixth-seeded Gauff said.

This was the 16th victory in her past 17 matches for Gauff, who will face No. 10 Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic on Thursday. Muchova, who made it to the French Open final in June, also used a terrific start — saving the nine break points she faced in the opening set, all in one game — to get past No. 30 Sorana Cirstea of Romania 6-0, 6-3 at night.