His Parents Met at the Australian Open 30 Years Ago. Now, Hes the Tournaments Breakout Star.
One January day in 1993, Bryan Shelton stood in the lobby of the Como Hotel in Melbourne, Australia, when he locked eyes with a girl. He was a tennis player; she was a rival’s sister, and since they both lived on the wild merry-go-round that is professional tennis, they could only have found themselves in Melbourne for one reason: the Australian Open. Bryan asked for her name. “Lisa,” she said.
Their story has taken them all around the world, from marriage to raising a family, and exactly 30 years later, it has brought them full circle. When their son, Ben, was 12, he told his parents he was quitting football. He didn’t want to be a quarterback anymore. He wanted to play tennis—and he wanted his father to coach him.
Now 20 years-old, Ben is on tour himself. And for his first international tournament—his first trip outside America, ever—he’s heading back to the place where his story first began, as a first-time entrant in the Australian Open. After two wins in early rounds, including a straight-set victory over Chilean Nicolas Jarry, he might just be in position to make a surprise run.
“It almost doesn’t look real,” Shelton told the New York Times of Melbourne. “It’s like an alternate world.”
In almost any other reality, Shelton wouldn’t be playing here—at least not yet. In late May 2022, he won the NCAA National Championship in singles as a sophomore at the University of Florida. A few weeks later, he went pro, ranked No. 547 in the world. To qualify for the Australian Open automatically, you have to be ranked in the top-100.
So Shelton started climbing.
Over the past six months, he played in every tournament he could, anything to crack that top-100, including grinding away at the tennis equivalent of the Minor Leagues, known as the Challenger Tour. In November, he won three Challenger events in a row, and when he got chances against the sport’s best and brightest, he made those count too, including defeating world No. 2 Casper Ruud. By the time the draw for Australia was finalized, Shelton had rocketed up to No. 92 in the world, the biggest jump of any player on tour. He booked his flight.
“I just started trusting myself more and more going into the summer,” Shelton said. “And the more that I competed at a higher level, I had more trust in myself to keep moving forward.”
In Melbourne, he’s looking to advance past the third round against Australian Alexei Popyrin, who just upset American Taylor Fritz. But no matter what happens on the court, there’s one place Shelton wants to visit before he heads back to the States: the lobby at the Como Hotel.
“That,” Shelton said laughing, “would be a cool place to see.”
🎙️ ICYMI former Los Angeles Rams lineman Andrew Whitworth joined David Greene for this week’s episode of In the Moment to discuss leading the Rams to a victory in last year’s Super Bowl and being able to retire a champion.
🏄♂️ For a brief second, the world’s premier big wave surfing competition, “The Eddie,” seemed to be on for the first time in 2016. The New York Times has the story of how the competition will have to keep waiting until conditions are just right.
🐢 Slow and steady wins the race, they say. Longtime Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy has run one mile every day for the last forty years. In that time, he’s jogged 14,500 miles—enough to go from New York to Los Angeles…five times. “There have been no glory days on this 40-year slog,” Shaughnessy writes. “The road never rose to meet me and the wind was never at my back.”
🏀 I loved this Chris Ballard story on Nikola Jokic and the lost art of NBA post play.
⚽ For The Player’s Tribune, Juventus midfielder Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir detailed her experience getting pregnant while playing at Lyon, the best female soccer club in the world. When the team didn’t pay her, she sued—and this week won her landmark case.
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