Houston
\n Shelton begins clay swing with 21-ace statement in Houston<\/p>\n
Top-seeded American is into the QFs<\/p>\n
April 02, 2026<\/p>\n
Kenneth Richmond\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Ben Shelton is into the Houston quarter-finals.
\n By ATP Staff<\/p>\n
Top seed Ben Shelton<\/a> began his clay-court swing in winning fashion Wednesday, ousting China\u2019s Zhang Zhizhen<\/a> 7-6(5), 7-6(3) at the Fayez Sarofim & Co. U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championship<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was my first match in almost a year on clay,\u201d said Shelton, who hammered 21 aces. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel that comfortable playing from the baseline yet, it\u2019s just something that\u2019s going to take time and take a few matches. I knew I had to be effective with my serve tonight and hit a few aces, and I\u2019m happy that I did.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither player broke serve throughout the one-hour, 53-minute match, during which Shelton rallied from 2\/5 in the first-set tie-break to win the opener. <\/p>\n Shelton, who won the Houston trophy in 2024, is playing his first clay-court event since advancing to the Roland Garros<\/a> quarter-finals last June. He arrived in Houston following a disappointing March, when he went 1-2 across Indian Wells and Miami. Shelton is set to surpass <\/a>Taylor Fritz<\/a> for American No. 1 honours in Monday’s PIF ATP Rankings.<\/p>\n \nThe 23-year-old improved to 2-1 in his Lexus ATP Head2Head series with Zhang, who beat Shelton two years ago at the clay-court ATP Masters 1000 event in Rome.<\/p>\n Into the quarter-finals, Shelton will next meet Argentine Thiago Agustin Tirante<\/a> for the first time. Tirante downed Mackenzie McDonald<\/a> 6-2, 6-0. Tirante’s countryman Tomas Martin Etcheverry<\/a> also advanced to the last eight with a 6-7(5), 6-0, 6-3 victory against Alex Bolt<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Shelton begins clay swing with 21-ace statement in Houston Top-seeded American is into the QFs April 02,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-231177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-houston-headlines","10":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}