US Open 2026 pages
Sports · US Open 2026 · Men's Singles · Round of 16
Ben Shelton vs Stefanos Tsitsipas — 6-2 6-3 6-4
 Ben Shelton✓ | 6 | 6 | 6 |
 Stefanos Tsitsipas | 2 | 3 | 4 |
Final · Sunday, September 6, 2026 · Round of 16
Result
Tsitsipas did not earn a single break point. Not one, across three sets: Shelton held all fourteen of his service games, hit twelve aces to two — one of them a 99 mph second serve — and touched 147 mph. The first set went in thirty-one minutes, broken twice from 40-15 down. The second turned on one game, Shelton winning a 24-stroke rally, the longest of the night, to earn break point at deuce and converting on the next ball. In the third Tsitsipas held first, which gave him the only lead he had all evening, and was broken in the next game after Shelton reached 0-40 and missed the first two — the only break points Shelton wasted all match. It ended 84 points to 58 in 1h52, his shortest match of the fortnight by forty-three minutes, two days after a third round that finished at 2:15 in the morning. For Tsitsipas, ranked 53rd, it was a first US Open fourth round and a first Slam second week in two years, reached by beating the tenth seed in the opening round from a set and 5-2 down. He was the last one-handed backhand left in the draw. Shelton is back in this quarter-final for the first time since 2023.
Ben SheltonRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
At this Stage
The Round of 16 is the fourth round, and the point at which a Grand Slam stops being a draw and becomes a tournament you can hold in your head: eight matches, played across Sunday and Monday, and the eight who come through are the quarter-finalists. Everyone still here has won three matches on these courts, so the seedings have stopped being a guide and the form of the fortnight has taken over.
Round of 32
Round of 16
What we know now
Court: Arthur Ashe Stadium
Match length: 1:52
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
What I said beforehand
The preview, frozen before the first serve. Clearly dated, never rewritten — that's the deal that makes the pick worth anything.
Neither of these two has played a straight-sets match at this tournament, and they have arrived here by opposite routes through the same number of sets. Shelton has won all three in four, each of them containing a tiebreak he had to win — Griekspoor after losing the opener 6-1, Hurkacz 7-6(3) and 7-5 in the last two, Shapovalov after serving for the second set twice and being broken both times. Tsitsipas has also won all three in four, and has lost the FIRST set in every one of them: to the 10th seed Arthur Fils, to the qualifier Lloyd Harris, and to the 18th seed Jiri Lehecka on Friday, whom he then beat 6-1 7-6(3) 6-1. That is the case for taking the unseeded man seriously — he has beaten two seeds to get here and shown he can lose an hour and not lose the match. Against it is almost everything else. Shelton is ranked ninth to Tsitsipas's 53rd, he is 36-14 for the season against 29-20, and his hard-court Elo is 144 points clear, which is a shade under seventy per cent on its own. Tsitsipas has never been past the third round in New York in nine visits; Shelton was a semi-finalist here at 20. The one thing that gives pause is the clock: Shelton did not leave Ashe until 2:07 a.m. on Saturday, and if this is called for Sunday he will have had a day less than he wants. Their only previous meeting went to Tsitsipas in two tiebreaks at Cincinnati in 2023, and it is three years old. Shelton, and probably in four again.
The case for Ben Shelton
67% to winShelton is the eighth seed and the ninth-ranked player in the world, he is 36-14 this season, and he reached the semi-finals on this court in 2023 at the age of 20 — a run Tsitsipas has never come close to matching in New York. His hard-court Elo is 144 points clear of his opponent's. He has served his way out of trouble in all three matches, taking a tiebreak in each and hitting fourteen aces against Shapovalov, and the left-handed serve is the one shot in this match neither man can plan around. He has also won three matches while, by his own account, playing nowhere near his best — "not an easy night, nowhere near my best, I got through it" was Saturday's verdict on himself — which is what the deeper runs tend to be made of.
The case for Stefanos Tsitsipas
33% to winTsitsipas has beaten the 10th seed and the 18th seed to get here and dropped the opening set in every match he has won, which is a particular kind of durability: he is 3-0 this week in matches he has been losing after a set. He has 255 career hard-court wins to Shelton's 103, and he owns the only meeting between them — 7-6(3) 7-6(2) at Cincinnati in 2023, a match in which he won both tiebreaks against exactly the serve that is supposed to beat him. Shelton, meanwhile, finished at 2:07 a.m. on Saturday after a four-set night that began at a quarter to eleven, and has now played three four-setters in six days. If this is scheduled for Sunday, the fresher man is the one ranked 53rd.
Both cases written 2026-09-05, before the first ball — frozen into the record exactly as written, whatever the result. The percentages are mine — opinions with a percent sign on. They add to 100 because tennis has no draw to hide the rounding in.
My locked pick: Ben Shelton to advance ✓ RIGHT
“144 points of hard-court Elo clear (≈70%); shaded three points to Tsitsipas for owning the only meeting and for Shelton's 2:07 a.m. finish on Saturday.”
Locked 2026-09-05 12:50 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Ben SheltonStefanos TsitsipasPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-05.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-05.
Storylines
- Neither man has dropped fewer than four sets on the way here: all six of their matches have gone four, and Tsitsipas has lost the opening set in all three of his.
- Tsitsipas is unseeded and ranked 53rd, and has beaten the 10th seed Arthur Fils and the 18th seed Jiri Lehecka to reach a US Open fourth round for the first time in nine appearances.
- Shelton finished at 2:07 a.m. on Saturday — the third match of this tournament to end after two in the morning — after Venus and Serena Williams's doubles kept Arthur Ashe busy for three hours.
- Their only previous meeting was three years ago at Cincinnati, when Tsitsipas won 7-6(3) 7-6(2) against a 20-year-old ranked 46th.
- Shelton reached the semi-finals here in 2023; Tsitsipas's best New York result before this week was a third round in 2021.
Head to head
One meeting, to Tsitsipas: the Cincinnati round of 32 in August 2023, 7-6(3) 7-6(2) on a hard court.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-09-05.
Court & schedule: Arthur Ashe Stadium, Sunday 6 September in the night session. The US Open posts each day's order of play the evening before; this one is on the board. (Official US Open order of play, as of 2026-09-05)
Weather: Sunday — the men's final, and the last match of the fortnight — is 78°F with showers and thunderstorms 95% likely, the wettest day of the two weeks and the one day that cannot be pushed back. Ashe closes its roof and plays on. It clears overnight: 20% Sunday night, 20% Monday, then dry and sunny from Tuesday. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-13)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.