NEW YORK — Alexander Zverev will play Ben Shelton for the US Open title on Sunday. Zverev beat Karen Khachanov 6-3, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (6) on Friday afternoon at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Shelton beat Frances Tiafoe 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 7-5 on the same court that night.
Zverev is 5-0 against Shelton. The two have never met at a major.
No American man has won a Grand Slam singles title since Andy Roddick at the 2003 US Open. Zverev said he would rather not be the man who ends that.
“Hopefully I can not make the American dream come true on Sunday,” Zverev said with a laugh.
At the French Open this year, Zverev won his first Grand Slam title. At Wimbledon he lost the final to Jannik Sinner. His record in Grand Slam matches this season is 24-2.
Zverev said the majors had gone against him for years and that this season has finally broken his way.
“Sometimes just things go your way and I feel like I’ve had a lot of struggles at the major level, I was so close so many times, and maybe this year God has said that this is going to be your year and just enjoy the time on the court,” Zverev said.
Ben Shelton Reaches His First Grand Slam Final
Tiafoe took the opening set 6-4. He broke at 4-4 on a Shelton double fault and committed three unforced errors in the set to Shelton’s 14.
Shelton served bigger from there. He finished with 20 aces and 47 winners. Tiafoe hit three aces and 27 winners.
Before the match, a giant American flag was unfurled across the court to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Serena Williams, Jalen Brunson, and Trinity Rodman, Shelton’s girlfriend, were among those in the crowd.
Shelton is 23. He was not yet a year old when Roddick won in New York.
“This is where we want to be: at the tail end of this tournament,” Shelton said.
Shelton dedicated the win to his grandmother, who died earlier this year and who he said got his father and coach, Bryan Shelton, into tennis.
Shelton will be ranked No. 4 in the world when the tournament ends. He came in at No. 9.
He is the first Black American man to reach a US Open final since Arthur Ashe in 1972. Friday was the first Grand Slam semifinal between two Black American men.
Tiafoe is now 0-3 in US Open semifinals. He lost the last two to fellow Americans, with Taylor Fritz beating him in 2024.
“I wanted to be in a Grand Slam final. Obviously it was a big match,” Tiafoe said. “Ben played well tonight. Served really well tonight, which made it really tough on me.”
Shelton leads their head-to-head 4-1.
In the quarterfinals, Shelton beat No. 2 seed Carlos Alcaraz, the defending champion, in a fifth-set tiebreaker. That match ended after 3:30 a.m. local time in New York, the latest finish in US Open history. Tiafoe reached the semifinals by coming back from two sets down against unseeded Alex Michelsen.
Alexander Zverev’s Path To A Third Straight Major Final
Lorenzo Sonego and Quentin Halys each pushed Zverev to five sets early in the draw. No man seeded No. 1 had played five-setters in each of the first two rounds of a major. Zverev has won 13 straight sets since.
On Wednesday night, Zverev beat unseeded Botic van de Zandschulp 6-2, 7-5, 6-1 in the quarterfinals.
Through six matches, Zverev has spent 19 hours, 38 minutes on court. Only one man has needed longer to reach a US Open final since the figure was first recorded in 1991. Alcaraz spent 20 hours, 20 minutes on his way to the 2022 final, according to ESPN Research.
Friday’s win was Zverev’s 52nd at tour level this season. No man on tour has more.
Zverev has now reached 13 Grand Slam semifinals. Four of them have come this year.
In the 2020 US Open final, Zverev led Dominic Thiem by two sets and lost in a fifth-set tiebreaker. Thiem was the first man to win the US Open after dropping the first two sets since 1949.
A win Sunday would make Zverev the fourth man in the Open era to claim his first two major titles in the same year. Jimmy Connors won his first three in 1974. Guillermo Vilas did it in 1977, and Sinner did it in 2024.
If Shelton wins instead, 2026 becomes the second year in the past 20 with two first-time major champions. The last was 2014, when Stan Wawrinka won the Australian Open and Marin Cilic won the US Open.
Karen Khachanov’s Run To The Semifinals
Khachanov came to New York unseeded. He was ranked No. 50 and carried a losing record for the season.
In the fourth round he beat No. 5 seed Felix Auger-Aliassime. Learner Tien pushed him to five sets. Alexander Blockx retired from their quarterfinal trailing 6-2, 7-5, 3-2, which sent Khachanov to the last four for the third time at a major. He also reached the semifinals in New York in 2022.
Down a set and trailing 2-0 in the second, Khachanov broke Zverev’s serve to level it. Neither man broke again. Khachanov erased Zverev’s first two set points in the tiebreaker before Zverev closed the set by winning a 34-shot rally.
In the third-set tiebreaker, Khachanov led 3-0 and then 5-2.
Novak Djokovic lost in the first round.
The men’s final is scheduled for 1 p.m. CT Sunday on ABC, with Spanish-language coverage on ESPN Deportes.
