Jannik Sinner’s elbow breaks Ben Shelton’s heart in perfect response to Wimbledon injury fears
When dusk set over SW19 on Tuesday, a very real question was whether Jannik Sinner’s elbow would break his heart.
The world No 1, still recovering from the emotional annihilation of his French Open final defeat by Carlos Alcaraz, was tasked with recovering from injury in time for his Wimbledon quarter-final with Ben Shelton. And when Sinner cancelled a practice on Tuesday, one day after falling and hurting his elbow in his lucky escape against an even-more-badly-injured Grigor Dimitrov, everyone wondered whether the Italian would play at all on Wednesday.
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Boy, did he play. Shelton must surely have wondered whether Sinner was ever injured at all. The Italian’s coach, Darren Cahill, said on Tuesday that Sinner had lost 6mph on his forehand courtesy of the afflicted elbow; where did those 6mph go, Darren? They seemed present and accounted for on No 1 Court, where Sinner looked a man in complete control of his arsenal – forehand, backhand, and serve.
In fact, if ever there was going to be a test of the sinews in Sinner’s sore elbow, it would be the serve of Shelton. Yet Sinner coped and even managed to make his own serve the weapon of the day. In the first set, 22-year-old Shelton was barely able to put a dent in the 23-year-old’s service games, winning shockingly few points.
The American did keep pace, however, and kept fans entertained. Along the way, he played a crowd-pleasing tweener and even produced a 139mph ace. That led one fan to joke: “Let’s have a 140!” Seconds later, Shelton hammered down a 147mph fault.
“Come on, Big Ben!” was a frequent, affectionate refrain from the sun-bathed stands. And when Big Ben outfought Sinner for a 2-0 lead in the first-set tiebreak, in one of the points of the set, No 1 Court greeted the moment as if the underdog had won the match itself. But a double fault soon followed, handing the momentum to Sinner, who ran away with the breaker, taking the set along with it.
Shelton actually recovered well to finally push Sinner on the latter’s serve in the first game of the second set, yet more frustration ensued, as the 22-year-old failed to convert two break points.
As the set wore on, Shelton’s match became about simply keeping up with Sinner, yet the match more broadly became about Shelton’s spirit. With Sinner having long since proven that his elbow was good to go, the story shifted onto his American opponent, who at one point hauled his athletic frame from the grass to get a Sinner smash back over the net.
The 10th seed received rousing support when, at 4-5, he found himself facing a break and set point all of a sudden. The support was not enough to help Shelton neutralise Sinner’s attack, however, and the crowd did show its respect for the world No 1 as he doubled his set lead.
In fact, it was Sinner’s 14th straight set win against Shelton, and that number reached 15 when he finally downed the young American just before 6pm in southwest London. Shelton offered one last burst of defence, saving two match points, but he was only delaying the inevitable.
“Yeah, I mean, when you are in a match with a lot of tension, you try to not think about it,” Sinner said of his injury, speaking after the match. “It has improved a lot from yesterday to today. Yesterday, my day was very short on the practice court, 20 minutes with the coaches only.
“This is no excuse. There is no better stage to play than this, and I think I showed this today. The atmosphere helped me today, so thank you so much for the support.”
The support was more in favour of Shelton, but Sinner rightfully received admiration for battling through whatever issue was lingering. And with that, Sinner lingers at the All England Club, for a little while longer at least.
