Hopes were high that Shelton could end the drought after his epic five-set quarter-final victory over defending champion Carlos Alcaraz, and a come-from-behind win over compatriot Frances Tiafoe in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
But Zverev\u2019s all-court excellence proved too much for Shelton, despite the support of a star-studded Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd trying to will the American to victory.<\/p>\n
With their backing, Shelton surged in the third set, eliminating the errors that Zverev had ruthlessly exploited.<\/p>\n
Serving to extend the set, Zverev fell behind 0-40. Shelton fired long on his first set point but on the second, Zverev\u2019s forehand volley went wide. Shelton had his first break of the match and they were headed to a fourth set.<\/p>\n
Zverev responded immediately, running Shelton ragged through a 24-shot rally until Shelton sailed a backhand wide to drop his serve in the opening game of the fourth set.<\/p>\n
Even with a break in hand, Zverev was feeling the tension, from a determined Shelton and the hostile crowd.<\/p>\n
At 30-30 in the fourth game, he received a time violation warning as he prepared to serve, but shook it off and won the game with a crisp crosscourt backhand that put him up 3-1.<\/p>\n
He rolled home, lifting his arms in triumph after Shelton fired a serve return long on match point and finally receiving his own huge cheer from the crowd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hopes were high that Shelton could end the drought after his epic five-set quarter-final victory over defending champion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[57908,58254,8612,34855,95,4498,18459,15361,29688,2741,5506,295619,73392,10813,128347,6805,111,139,69,5493,8466,139399,10814,213,2563,61,1865,3040,6027,102,234617],"class_list":["post-599609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-57908","tag-58254","tag-8612","tag-alexander","tag-and","tag-beat","tag-beats","tag-ben","tag-bitter","tag-claim","tag-defeat","tag-expunging","tag-flushing","tag-grand","tag-meadows","tag-memory","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-open","tag-second","tag-shelton","tag-slam","tag-sports","tag-title","tag-to","tag-today","tag-us","tag-win","tag-with","tag-zverev"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}