It’s the little moments in tennis that kill you.

Ben Shelton needed 34 minutes of his maiden U.S. Open final to win a single point against Alexander Zverev’s first serve, and two hours and 17 minutes to produce a break point. But having lost the first two sets, Shelton grabbed the third with an exhilarating passage of forehand winners and passing shots. When Zverev stoned a volley on set point, Arthur Ashe Stadium erupted with its loudest cheer of the afternoon. Shelton is well-liked in his own right, but the crowd was desperate for an American men’s champion to break the exasperatingly oft-cited drought since Andy Roddick in 2003. Shelton pointed to his ear and looked at the crowd with a knowing smirk: You thought I was done…unless? Shelton had been playing the best tennis of the tournament; Zverev had epically blown a U.S. Open final from two sets up in 2020; a comeback here was possible.

For about five minutes, anyway. At the start of the fourth set, Shelton went up 30-love and then double faulted. Theoretically, no big deal — it was still 30-15, a good position given the might of Shelton’s serve, which had spat bullets nearing 150 mph (the radar gun erroneously recorded one of his deliveries at 158 during his semifinal with Frances Tiafoe, but Shelton has neared that mark enough that plenty of people believed he’d really hit it) and high-bouncing, unattackable second serves all tournament. But the double fault arrested his momentum. He suddenly found himself in a complicated game, having to stare down break points. On the second one, Zverev returned an overhead smash, trapped Shelton in a long rally, and eventually coaxed him to miss a backhand passing shot by a mile.

That effectively ended the match. Unable to count on a break, Shelton limped along to 2-4, at which point he lost serve again. After Zverev won match point, he strangely did not celebrate at all, apparently under the impression that he’d........

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