Fourth-seeded Ben Shelton rallied for the biggest championship of his career, recording a 6-7 (5), 6-4, 7-6 (3) win over 11th-seeded Karen Khachanov in the final of the National Bank Open on Thursday in Toronto.
Shelton, 22, earned his first ATP Masters 1000 title while becoming the youngest U.S. player to win a Masters 1000 event since Andy Roddick was the champion at Miami in 2004.
“It’s a surreal feeling,” Shelton said. “It’s been a long week, not an easy path to the final. My best tennis came out when it mattered most. I was clutch, I persevered, I was resilient. All the qualities I like to see in myself.”
After squandering three set points just before losing the first tiebreaker, Shelton got the only service break of the second set for a 5-4 lead. Khachanov had four break points in the following game but couldn’t level the set.
Neither player had a break point in the third set before Shelton won the first three points of the decisive tiebreaker and pulled away from there.
Shelton said of Khachanov, “Karen was bullying me around the court. The way he hit his forehand tonight, the way he was cutting off the court, the way he was serving, it felt like I had a freight train coming at me. So it was uncomfortable to move forward. The ball was coming at me even faster.
“But I started being able to redirect, get some big shots off of my own, and kind of flip the momentum of that match. So that was huge for me.”
The result will move Shelton up to a career-high ranking of sixth in the world ahead of the U.S. Open later this month.
Shelton had never been in a final of this magnitude previously, and he has never reached a Grand Slam final. His only previous tournament victories came at a hard-court event in Tokyo in 2023 and a clay-court event in Houston last year.
Shelton piled up a 16-3 edge in aces and won 80 percent of his first-serve points. He had more winners than Khachanov (38-29) but also more unforced errors (45-30).
Khachanov, a 29-year-old Russian, was competing in his second ATP Masters 1000 final, having won the Paris event in 2018. Like Shelton, he is a two-time Grand Slam semifinalist but has yet to reach a major final.
Cincinnati Open
Both U.S. players in action lost as first-round action got underway in Mason, Ohio.
Hungary’s Fabian Marozsan recorded a 6-1, 4-6, 6-4 victory over U.S. qualifier Colton Smith, and France’s Corentin Moutet got past the United States’ Mackenzie McDonald 7-5, 6-3.
Four qualifiers — France’s Terence Atmane and Adrian Mannarino, Colombia’s Daniel Elahi Galan and Hong Kong’s Coleman Wong — won their openers. Also advancing were Belgium’s Zizou Bergs, France’s Benjamin Bonzi and Arthur Rinderknech, Spain’s Roberto Carballes Baena and Pedro Martinez, Argentina’s Tomas Martin Etcheverry and Sebastian Baez, Brazil’s Joao Fonseca and Russia’s Roman Safiullin.
–Field Level Media
