{"id":471060,"date":"2026-02-16T01:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T01:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/471060\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T01:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T01:01:07","slug":"shelton-tops-fritz-to-win-dallas-open-in-all-american-matchup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/471060\/","title":{"rendered":"Shelton tops Fritz to win Dallas Open in all-American matchup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Feb 15, 2026, 04:35 PM ET<\/p>\n

FRISCO, Texas — Ben Shelton<\/a> saved three match points before finishing another rally at the Dallas Open, beating top-seeded Taylor Fritz<\/a> in three sets for the title Sunday in a matchup of the world’s highest-ranked American men.<\/p>\n

The No. 2 seed and No. 9 player in the ATP rankings lost the first set in each of the last three rounds of the tournament, this time coming back for a 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 victory over Fritz in the first meeting of the top seeds since the event moved to Dallas in 2022.<\/p>\n

Shelton improved to 4-0 in ATP finals and beat Fritz, ranked seventh in the world, after the pair had split their first two meetings. The 23-year-old’s title came after he reached the Australian Open quarterfinals last month, losing in straight sets to Jannik Sinner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After saving three match points to get the third set to 5-5, Shelton had three chances to close out Fritz while serving for the match. Fritz saved the first two, but the 10-time ATP champion couldn’t match his opponent by saving the third.<\/p>\n

“This was a crazy match to be a part of,” Shelton said. “I thought the level was amazing.”<\/p>\n

Fritz’s dominant serving from a semifinal win over Marin Cilic<\/a> — the 28-year-old didn’t even face a break point while winning both tiebreakers in a straight-sets victory — carried over to the first set of the final. Fritz won 12 of his first 13 service points while breaking Shelton in the left-hander’s first service game.<\/p>\n

Shelton turned the match late in the second set by breaking Fritz’s serve for a 5-3 lead, then did it again early in the third set.<\/p>\n

Fritz broke back for 3-3 was leading 5-4 on Shelton’s serve when he had three chances to close out the match. Shelton got to deuce with an overhead smash from the net and a backhand winner that caught Fritz going the wrong way.<\/p>\n

On Fritz’s last match point, Shelton converted a volley to get back to deuce and went on to hold serve with a backhand volley into the open court with both players at the net.<\/p>\n

“If you’d told me I lost after having three match points, I think I would expect to be a lot more upset,” Fritz said. “It hurts, but I feel like it doesn’t hurt as much as I would expect it to because I don’t really have a lot of regrets with how I played those match points.”<\/p>\n

Fritz’s double-fault — the only one of the match for either player — gave Shelton three break points at 5-5. Shelton converted the second break chance when Fritz’s forehand went long.<\/p>\n

An ace on a second serve gave Shelton three match points, and he converted the second when Fritz’s lunging return attempt on Shelton’s approach shot fell short.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feb 15, 2026, 04:35 PM ET FRISCO, Texas — Ben Shelton saved three match points before finishing another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-471060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}