Shelton Shut Down, Serena Returns, Sinner Survives Scare | Wimbledon 2026

**Gill Gross** (0:03)
Welcome, everyone, to Monday Match Analysis. I am Gill Gross. It is the Wimbledon 2026 first round show. We normally do a mailbag after the first round of the major. That is tradition around here. But I looked at this first round of Wimbledon, and I saw so many matches that I wanted to break down in depth, especially when, sadly, Taylor Fritz versus Jack Draper was part of the ledger. That match did not materialize. We'll talk about what went down there. But still, I have postponed the mailbag until after the second round, so I will be taking your comments after the second round. Stay tuned for that, and definitely watch out for the post that I will put on the YouTube post tab a little bit after this show goes live. So on today's show, we're going to talk about Serena Williams losing to Maya Joint in her comeback. We're going to talk about Sinner beating Kecmanovic in 5 We're going to talk about Draper pulling out. We're going to talk about Djokovic versus Wu Yibing. We're going to talk about Jakub Mensik escaping Toby Samuel in 5 We'll hit on Sviatek Townsend a little bit, and we'll hit on Rublev, Saffiulin a little bit.
Maybe some bonus nuggets in there, but those are going to be our main topics. What I want to start with though, is what I'm most excited to talk about. Big up set on Tuesday, Otto Virtanen over Ben Shelton in 5 sets. A lot of explosive discourse out there, a lot of negativity being hurled Ben Shelton's way right now, and I do get it. I'm going to challenge some of it, but I get it. There's a real bare case at the moment when it comes to Ben Shelton. The whole calling card for Shelton up until this point in his career is that he shows up for the big events. He was the one who took the opportunity at the Canada Masters last year when Sinner and Alcáez were out. He was the one who had basically gone his entire career without taking a single upset at a major up until Roland Garros a month ago when he lost to Rafael Colenon, and now he's taken two bad defeats in a row at slams, Withdraw opportunity ahead, and it hasn't helped the case that not only has he had two disappointing majors in a row, but he's also been pretty awful at the Masters 1000s this year. That is all true. That said, I think when it comes to this particular result at Wimbledon, expectations are going to inform your reaction to a result like this. Now I think that this is going to be a really tough, hard defeat on Ben. Really tough. Because there are opportunities to win it. I think he has high expectations for himself as he should. That said, if you are somebody who thought that there was a really, really high chance that Shelton was a guy who's going to make the final, or the semis, or even the quarters at Wimbledon pre-event, if you are someone who looked at this first round matchup against Otto Virtanen and thought there's no way that Ben Shelton is going to lose to some guy named Otto Virtanen, I could understand why some of that kind of more mainstream reaction was what the heck is this awful, awful, awful loss? My expectations were not there for Ben, and therefore my reaction is not that for Ben. I think right now he's probably just kind of overrated on grass, a surface that exposes his returning weakness, a surface that forces him to hit more backhands, a surface that exposes his rush ability, a surface that mutes his forehand RPMs, and his kick serve. I get it. He's a lefty with a big serve. He's aggressive. He goes to the net. That's one side of the coin. There's a bunch of other stuff that I just rattled off that should be and I think will be throughout Shelton's career challenging on this surface for him.
Otto Virtanen is a sick talent.
Secondhand today, I was DMing with somebody who was talking to a coach who said that all of Virtanen shots are basically top 30, but his mental is basically 500 in the world, which is in line with what I've observed out of him throughout his career. He's a guy, and there's not many people in this category, but he's a guy who I really wish sometimes would just try a little bit harder. He's had some focus issues. I think he's had some issues with dedication. Sometimes he's just not as intense as you want him to be, but the talent is unreal. He serves very, very well. He's in great form. He's made a couple of Challenger Finals on grass in the lead up. Shelton doesn't break a lot on any surface, but especially he won't break a lot here. This was always going to be a close match. And I'm qualified to say this and not be met with, you know, hindsight's 2020 or just defending Shelton for whatever reason. No, I said this all before. I'm sure most of the people watching here watched my preview, but for those who didn't, Otto Virtanen was my dark horse. One of my two dark horses in this quarter to be completely transparent.