Jannik Sinner’s extraordinary 12-month heater since last year’s Wimbledon semi-final loss – winning a half-dozen ATP titles, helping Italy to a first Davis Cup win in 47 years, capturing his first major championship and becoming the first Italian to top the ATP’s world rankings – has been attributed to a rebuilt serve and the soaring confidence it has produced.
That reconstructed shot was on full display on Sunday as the No 1 seed cruised into the last eight with a 6-2, 6-4, 7-6 (9) win over the American Ben Shelton after two hours and eight minutes. But it was Sinner’s superb return game that gave the fourth-rounder the feel of a no-contest until a last-ditch resurgence by Shelton came up short.
Playing under the roof of No 1 Court while rainfall wrought havoc on the outer courts, Sinner utterly dominated Shelton for the opening hour before coming through a hard-fought third set to reach the quarter-finals for a third straight year and remain on a semi-final collision course with Carlos Alcaraz.
“A very tough match, especially the third set,” said Sinner, who will play either the Russian Daniil Medvedev or Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov next. “These kind of matches, they can go very long. I’m very happy to close it in three.”
Few of the seven Americans left in the men’s and women’s draws on Sunday morning – the most US players to reach the second week at Wimbledon in two decades – have generated as much stateside excitement as the 21-year-old Shelton. But Sunday’s opening stages showed just how far the surprise US Open semi-finalist has to go to reach the contender flight at majors.
The chasm in class never looked wider as Sinner broke twice and breezed through a 29-minute opener, dropping only one point on his racket while hitting nine winners against just four unforced errors. Yet it was his comfortable management of Shelton’s left-handed howitzer that gave the American no quarter on his serve as he was pressured and bludgeoned into one error after another.
A dropped first set was no death knell for Shelton, who had come from behind in three straight five-setters to reach the fourth round, but Sunday’s task was a clear step up from Mattia Bellucci, Lloyd Harris or Denis Shapovalov. The American was broken immediately to start the second, troubled by Sinner’s awesome ball-striking, wilting in the longer rallies and donating errors from all over the court.
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Yet Shelton made things interesting in the third. He finally generated a break chance on his opening return game, got the best of a gruelling 18-shot exchange to convert, then consolidated with a stress-free hold. Sinner broke back shortly after but a patch of error-strewn play left the Italian to save a set point before forcing a tie-break – a tense affair where Shelton wasted three more set points and saved a match point before double-faulting on a second.
Sinner and Alcaraz – which has emerged as one the sport’s most compelling rivalries – will meet on Friday in the last four if both win their next matches. Their 10 previous meetings have included last month’s epic five-setter at the French Open after memorable encounters at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2022.
