Zverev Shuts Down Shelton for 2nd Major Title at 2026 US Open | Monday Match Analysis

Gill Gross (0:02)

Welcome, everyone, to Monday Match Analysis. I'm Gill Gross. Alexander Zverev is US Open Champion, his second major title in the bag. And Andy Roddick is still the answer to the easiest trivia question in all of tennis, as Zverev defeats Ben Shelton in four sets on Sunday in New York. Normally, I start with some bigger picture stuff. I want to jump right into the tactics, which is what people are usually most excited. To hear from me about, because I do think there were some really interesting, effective, and obvious ways in which Zverev was able to bother Shelton. And I want to start with something that Andy Roddick did start harping on on ESPN, and then Zverev actually started affirming himself after the match in his interview with ESPN. And whenever that happens, part of me is happy, because I think, like, oh, Andy's a really smart guy, Zverev was actually the guy who was playing the match, so I was on to something here. The other part of me is like, ah, now I'm going to say it, and it's not very original, but we're going to do it. Zverev's forehand strategy was on point, and it started with playing a lot of shape and spin on the crosscourt forehand, dropping off the pace as a result. Forcing Shelton to generate his own, testing Ben's footwork, and forcing some high contact points as well. So the way I like to think about it, when you play with shape on the ball, you create sort of a red zone, a red zone in the ball's flight path, where there's a certain period of time where the ball is above the optimal hitting zone, okay? It leaves the court, it's going to get to the optimal hitting zone, it's then going to leave that stratosphere, and then it's eventually going to come back down into an optimal hitting zone, but you've created that red portion of the ball flight, and it requires footwork to either take the ball early, take the ball on when it kind of gets into that comfortable spot on the way up on the rise, or you've got to let it drop into that comfortable spot on the fall. So, the up and back footwork ends up being tested. If you're stagnant on the feet, you end up getting those high contact points, which did happen to Shelton at times. But I do think the more important part of that equation is just the idea that the ball isn't coming in with a lot of speed, and that the way to extract weaker backhands from Shelton is to make him generate the pace on his own, which is what Zverev said on the ESPN desk after. And I quote, I quote Alexander Zverev here, Against Ben, you don't need to be aggressive all the time. The more pace you play into his backhand, the better he plays. I think that's the mistake Carlos and maybe Francis made. Now I tweeted that quote out. People are getting really mad at Sasha for saying this. I'm not really sure why.

If he didn't say it, I don't know that I would have been as quick to put Francis in that, but definitely Carlos, who really doesn't love to. Now sometimes at points in his career, he has dialed back and played with a little bit less speed and more shape. Did not see that against Shelton at all. I saw him gunning the ball most of the time and playing really fast off the ground for the most part. So Ben is not really forced to produce his own speed. He already has a lot coming in. Now if we can go a little bit deeper into a zone that Zverev didn't explore, understandably, let's talk about the why behind this. Why is Shelton's backhand better with speed coming in? Hugh Clark, Threat of Order, has done some good work recently on Shelton's backhand, pointing out that it is a double bent arm backhand. So both the bottom hand and the top hand on the racquet, at contact and almost through the entire swing actually, including the take back, the arm never straightens out.

If you do straighten out the arm, you create a little bit more length in the swing.

The backhands, there have been some great backhands, some very solid backhands over the years, that have the double bent arm technique. So it's not wrong at face value. You think about, the three guys who I think about are Daniil Medvedev, David Ferrer and Francis Tiafoe. Those are the three double bent arm. There are certainly other examples. Those are the three that come to mind at least for me. Now what's interesting is that all three of those guys who all have better backhands than Shelton just at face value, but they all have very good pace absorbing backhands, none of them hit huge, they're all flat hitters, but they're very like rock solid flat backhands, tough to break down, good like compact returners and pace absorbers. None of them have elastic backhands that create a lot of speed and spin.