Oct 11 (Reuters) – US Open finalist \u2060Ben Shelton conceded he had been “outplayed” after suffering a shock 7-6(5) \u20607-6(3) defeat by France’s Arthur Gea in the third round of \u200cthe Shanghai Masters on Sunday.<\/p>\n
World number four Shelton, who has barely played since losing to Alexander Zverev in September’s US Open final and withdrew from the Japan Open due to fitness concerns, \u200blost both sets against the world number 56 \u2060in tight tiebreakers.<\/p>\n
Asked if his \u2060recent lack of action had had an effect on him, Shelton told reporters: “I \u2060mean, \u200cI got outplayed today. The guy played better than me. <\/p>\n
“A hundred percent, I would have liked to have come over here earlier and \u2060be prepared and have already dealt with the jet \u200blag by the time \u200cI was playing here in the Shanghai Masters. <\/p>\n
“My body wasn’t ready. \u2060I wasn’t physically \u200bready to play in Tokyo. That’s just the way this tour is sometimes.”<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old American said he was focused on finishing his 2026 campaign on a “high note” at \u2060the season-ending ATP Finals in Turin next month.<\/p>\n
“Obviously \u200bI want to be prepared and playing some of my best tennis when I get there,” he added. <\/p>\n
“Three tournaments left to finish the year, which has been \u2060a very up and down year, but a great year, on a high note.”<\/p>\n
Gea, who next faces either Jakub Mensik or Francisco Cerundolo, was delighted with his first win over a top-10 player.<\/p>\n
“I’m practicing hard every day since the \u200bbeginning of the year to win against those guys,” \u2060he said. <\/p>\n
“Of course, when you win, it is always special. But, yeah, I \u200bwas prepared and I was confident before the \u200cmatch. Also playing a really good season \u200bright now, so, yeah, that’s a really good win, but I was ready for it.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Aadi Nair in BengaluruEditing by Christian Radnedge)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oct 11 (Reuters) – US Open finalist \u2060Ben Shelton conceded he had been “outplayed” after suffering a shock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":924112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,6675,85,747],"class_list":["post-924111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-na","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}