Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe are one match away from US Open history
TheGrio...
For the first time in US Open history, two Black men, Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe, will compete in the tennis tournament’s semifinal.
It has been 58 years since a Black man won the US Open, and 52 years since one reached the tournament’s final round. However, this week, Frances Tiafoe or Ben Shelton could change that. This Friday, the two tennis stars will face off in the 2026 US Open semifinals, marking the first time two Black American men have reached this stage. This historic match comes three years after the two made history as the first Black male tennis stars to make it the US Open quarter finals in 2023.
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Last night, Tiafoe defeated Alex Michelsen in an intense 5-hours tennis match that ended with an emotional moment between two friends. Instead of sharing the customary handshake between opponents, the two tennis players embraced each other in a hug during which Michelsen appeared to cry on Tiafoe’s shoulder.
“Man, I know. I’ve been there. I know how much that hurts,” Tiafoe, 28, told reporters reflecting on what he told him in the moment. “You’re gonna be here so many more times, and I’m gonna be in a rocking chair when you do so.”
Hours later, Shelton, 23, stepped off the court victorious after beating Carlos Alcaraz in a match that didn’t end until 3:30 AM.
“It’s incredible,” Shelton said. “I always say that this is the greatest sports city in the world, I say that this is the greatest stadium in the world.”
The 23-year-old’s affinity for tennis goes back to his mother, Lisa, who played junior tennis, and his father, Bryan Shelton, who played the sport professionally in the late 1980s and 1990s before retiring and becoming a college tennis coach. His coaching led Georgia Tech’s women’s team and the University of Florida’s men’s team to win NCAA Championships, and now his expertise is helping advance his son’s career. Serving as his head coach, Shelton describes the father-son duo as “the dream team.”
“[My dad] would never let me play him, I don’t think he ever will let me play him,” Ben joked in an on-court interview. “He probably still thinks he can beat me.”
Similarly, Tiafoe’s journey through tennis begins with his father. The child of two immigrants from Sierra Leone, the 2026 US Open semifinalist was raised in Maryland, where his father worked as the head of maintenance of the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, MD. From spending time there after school to eventually enrolling in tennis lessons at age 4, Tiafoe honed his skills and became one of the most notable names in tennis today, inspiring communities around the world.
“To have my name around, you know, those legends in the same sentence, it’s crazy. I worked all my life to have those kinds of conversations, and I got a lot more work to do, a lot more things to prove, and a lot more to get in this game,” he told theGrio in 2025. “[Being Black] means everything to me. I mean, you have such a big opportunity to do something special for so many different people, especially in a predominantly white sport, me doing well, what that means…you got people, where you’re from in the neighborhood, people in low-income areas thinking they can do something special. You know, we always have to be twice as good to get things done and get the notoriety. So, obviously, the whole community behind me, it’s all love.”