A final decided in the opening game
Shelton served first and lost the opening two points. He then double-faulted the game away. The set ended on another double fault, and by then Arthur Ashe Stadium had already worked out what kind of evening this was going to be. Alexander Zverev won 6-3, 7-6 (2), 5-7, 6-2 on Sunday to take the US Open title, his second Grand Slam and the one he let slip six years ago.
The numbers behind it were brutal. Zverev won 68 of his 80 first-serve points, an 85 percent rate, and finished with nine aces and 35 winners. Shelton hit ten aces after producing twenty in four sets against Frances Tiafoe in the semi-finals. The 23-year-old’s power never found a target.
Zverev also did something more subtle. He bounces the ball before serving, sometimes ten times, sometimes closer to twenty, and each of those routines buys silence from a crowd obliged to stay quiet until the point ends. Fans tried cheering his missed first serves instead. The chair umpire told them off. Zverev had said before the match he enjoys a hostile room, and he looked like a man who meant it.
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The tiebreak that ended Shelton’s night
The second set was where the match could have turned. Shelton returned the opening serve of the tiebreak long, was passed on the next point, then lost a 16-shot rally to fall 3-0 behind. Zverev followed with serves of 147 mph and 124 mph that came back nowhere. Shelton clawed to 5-2, got one more return into play, lost that point too, and watched a 139 mph delivery close it out.
Shelton did take the third set, the second time in six career meetings that he has won one against Zverev. He has never won a match. That 0-6 record now includes a Grand Slam final, and he leaves New York having beaten defending champion Carlos Alcaraz in a quarter-final that finished at 3:33 in the morning, the latest end in tournament history, only to fall short of becoming the first man since 1975 to knock out both the top two seeds on the way to the title.
Two droughts, one continuing
American men have not won a major since Andy Roddick took this title in 2003. Shelton was also chasing the first men’s crown by a Black player since Arthur Ashe in 1968. Both waits go on.
Zverev arrived as the No. 1 seed at a Slam for the first time, a status handed to him when Jannik Sinner withdrew with a knee injury. He won Roland-Garros earlier this year and lost the Wimbledon final to Sinner. In 2020 he led Dominic Thiem by two sets in this final and became the first man since 1949 to lose from there. That version of Zverev did not show up on Sunday.
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