Shelton & Fils Explode for Munich & Barcelona Titles, FO Power Rankings | Monday Match Analysis

**Gill Gross** (0:02)
Welcome, everyone, to Monday Match Analysis. I'm Gill Gross, Arthur Fils' champion in Barcelona. His first title since returning from the back injury beats Rublev in that final. We'll talk about that. We'll do French Open Power Rankings at the end of the show, but we'll begin in Munich. Ben Shelton goes all the way, beating Cobolli in the final one year after falling in the championship match against Alexander Zverev. Ben Shelton is doing things that haven't been done since Jim Courier and Andre Agassi, which I understand sounds hyperbolic after a title in Munich, but it is true. The last time an American man made back-to-back finals on European clay, meaning the same tournament back-to-back years, that was Jim Courier at Roland Garros in the early 90s. The last time an American man won a clay court title above the 250 level, that was Andre Agassi in Rome 2002 I understand that Munich is not Roland Garros, it is not Rome, but I feel like I can make a case, and I want to make a case. It's one I believe in for Ben Shelton on clay. I think it's going to be a real thing, which sounds a little bit crazy at face value. He's an American with a big serve and a big forehand. This is exactly, again, on the surface, the prototype of player who has not been able to translate the hard court and grass court success onto the red clay over the years. Dig a little bit deeper. That's what I'm going to do. And I actually think that red clay is going to be a great surface for Ben. Why might a player perform better in specific conditions on a specific surface? It's because that surface is going to hide weaknesses and accentuate strengths. So let's start with the former. How does clay hide Shelton's weaknesses? First off, it's easier for him to return serve.
He's easily rushable on the return. He's worked very hard on abbreviated technique in order to improve on the return. But based on his numbers coming into this Munich final, that remains a real work in progress and a bona fide weakness in Shelton's game. His ability to return effectively. This week, he did the typical clay quarter. He went to the back fence. The surface is obviously going to take speed off the ball. It's not going to punish negative court position as heavily. So Shelton went to the back fence and took much fuller swings at the ball on the return because he had time to do so. And his return looked a whole lot better. And he has the weight of shot and he has the athleticism to be able to and sort of the ball shape to be able to start points from a deep position and work his way forward. So the return looked a lot better this week. That's hiding a weakness.
End range hitting, his sliding, it's not very good on hard court. It's basically non-existent on his backhand. He can't really slide onto his right leg on a hard court, which hurts his backhand defense.
There was some sneaky, subtle, open stance backhand stuff that looked really good this week from Shelton. I was like, oh, well, that's different. He can hit a sliding open stance backhand on this surface. Can't do that on grass and hard. He doesn't have that. He looked more comfortable sliding this week than I've ever seen. I mean, it's been progressively better year after year since Shelton came out of the tour, but it was good sliding out of him. And his ability to just defend the corners looked better to me.
This is the big one, this third one, fewer backhands.
He's not a balanced player forehand backhand. The backhand is not going to really win him a lot of baseline exchanges. But with the ball slowing down off the bounce, you gain those fractions of a second that are so valuable for run around footwork to be executed. So that plus the slightly deeper court position that you can get away with on the clay, it again gives Shelton that extra time to run around, to turn backhands, would be backhands into forehands, which is a really big deal. So, we are hiding weaknesses, return, defense, backhand.
We are also accentuating strengths. Extra time on the forehand, it is a forehand that craves time. It craves it. Clay gives that forehand time to load up.
Heavy RPMs on the forehand and the serve.
He can get it up out of the zone. This was huge against Cobolli. Shelton's heavily spun forehand cross court was an ace up the sleeve for him. It was the most impactful ground stroke on the court to my eyes throughout the match because Cobolli's backhand contact points ended up being nightmarish. Absolutely nightmarish because of the way that ball was jumping up on him.