{"id":320645,"date":"2025-12-17T09:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T09:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/320645\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T09:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T09:41:07","slug":"djokovic-draper-or-shelton-who-could-challenge-alcaraz-and-sinner-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/320645\/","title":{"rendered":"Djokovic, Draper or Shelton: Who could challenge Alcaraz and Sinner in 2026?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With serves touching 150mph and plenty of on-court sass, Shelton announced himself with his run to the New York semi-finals in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The left-handed American reached another Grand Slam semi-final in Melbourne this year, but came unstuck against Sinner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His progress at the next two majors was blocked by Alcaraz at Roland Garros and Sinner again at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think the next guy will have to have a huge ego if he wants to be in the mix &#8211; so it can be someone like Shelton, maybe,&#8221; said Mouratoglou.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He will have to make progress but I think his confidence in himself and in his game is big enough.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former British number one Greg Rusedski agrees Shelton has the &#8220;firepower&#8221; to win a major.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But only if he makes the improvements on his backhand, his court positioning and plays the big points better,&#8221; Rusedski added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With serves touching 150mph and plenty of on-court sass, Shelton announced himself with his run to the New&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-320645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}