Ben Shelton Wants to Win the US Open More Than Anything

0:00The U.S. Open for me is the pinnacle above every other tournament. Anthony Edwards, he said he'd be the best DB in football. He told me he would return my serve. No chance. He said, man, I'm hitting that back, man. That's a big holder. 80 % of the radars that we use are wrong. If you just look at like the build of Carlos Alcaraz versus someone back in the day and the speed he's hitting, all the shots that he has, complete tennis. When you look at legacy in tennis, the only thing that people really look at are Ben Slam. You really watch film. I like to see the guy that I'm playing get beat before I play him, you know?

0:36You have to have this psycho focus. I interviewed Carl Towns and Jalen Brunson last year and they won the chip. If you do win the Open, let's make this like a thing. I mean, I hear everything you touch turns to the little end. Woo! That's right. That's what I hear about Rich Klyman. What's up, everybody? This is Rich Klyman and welcome to Boardroom Talks. Today, we are sitting down with the one and only Ben Shelton. Ben, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, bro. How you feeling, bro? I feel good, honestly. Being in New York is like the best atmosphere, energy in the world. Being a tennis player, the U.S.

1:11Open for me is the pinnacle, so I'm just happy to be here. And in terms of like your play this summer, I'm sure every time you step on to a major court, you feel like you can win. But with how you played this summer and how you feel physically, what's like the mindset going in this year? This is the tournament for me that I want to win above every other tournament. I think that it's the biggest, for me, most important tournament that we play. A lot of people will say Wimbledon because of the history of the sport, but for me it's here. I also play my best on the surface, hot, humid conditions in the United States.

1:48I feel the energy from the crowd. I feel like it's kind of a perfect storm for me. So coming here confident, especially, like you said, the way I've been playing this summer. And I think that, you know, the toughest thing about the Grand Slams and tournaments that have such a long format is being able to stay in the moment and take things one step at a time, one match at a time and not get ahead of yourself. You know, the one thing that people don't see in tennis as much is that you got to win three out of five sets for seven matches over two weeks. So you got to bring your best stuff and be able to repeat it over and over and over again.

2:23I think that's what makes our sport a little bit different and why it's so tough to be a champion. So you've won on all three surfaces, but you said that this surface and this time of year you find the most suitable for your game. Is it the hard court? It's the weather? It's the environment? Is it all of it? When the court gets hot, the ball bounces so much higher. I'm very good at getting the ball to jump out of the zone and I think that's a huge advantage for me I think fitness comes into play as well which I'm going to take myself if it's a physical war and Grand Slams just come down a lot of times who's more brave and who wants it more and I think that when you bring the physical aspect into it along with kind of the way that the court suits my game.

3:18I think that for me it's the best surface for me to play on, my favorite surface to play on. I feel like I've improved on the other surfaces throughout the years, but still so much work to do to become great on those. Is like the two weeks of the major the week leading up to it, you know in the NBA they'll always say that the playoffs are like a totally different sport from the regular season nothing's comparable do you feel it's similar in terms of like your preparation mentally physically how everybody else steps up that it's almost like a whole different sport that you're playing in some ways during the majors I think the lights get a lot brighter you know when you're playing on Arthur Ashe just you and one other guy out there and there's 24 ,000 people there or you're at center court wimbledon for the first time i think that nerves come into play a lot more you know what you're playing for how much each win means at a tournament like this and then obviously the format that we're playing a longer format which can be a blessing and a curse depending on who you are at the same time you're in a city like new york there's so many distractions here and i think that half the battle is being able to you know maintain your focus keep your circle small and and stay you know focus on the job at hand for for three weeks if if you want to come away uh with a title or a deep run here you come in you got in town yesterday so you come in like a week before is this week business is this like checking the boxes of the brands and and making appearances or are you starting to roll out your regimen your sleep your practice as if you're prepping for sunday monday yeah it's both you got to manage it uh Early in the week, I'll do some business stuff.

5:05By the time we get to Friday, Saturday, Sunday, everything's shut down. But the business stuff has kind of worked around my practice schedule, sleep schedule. But yeah, this is the week that if brands sign you, they want you for that week before the U.S. Open where you're hottest going into the most exciting tournament of the year. So there's going to be asks. There's going to be obligations that you've got to show up for throughout this week. But I think the part of being a great agent, as you know, is being able to kind of manage that for your athlete and make sure that they're not overcommitted in terms of their days.

5:42I don't have to tell you that. But like, do you, when the tournament starts, will you play a match? You like playing at night better or you like playing during the day? It's tough for me. I always have an internal battle because the day match is better conditions for me. I like playing under the sun, the heat. It's faster, bouncier, like I said. But obviously the atmosphere at night is ridiculous. So when you finish your match, let's say you have a night match, are you out with your team? Are you watching film? Do you go and relax a little bit, or do you really go back to the hotel? You're getting treatment, and you have to start all over again tomorrow.

6:20Yeah, it's tough. So you play a night match. We go back to 2023. I played Francis in the quarterfinals here. We played night match. We finished at 1 a.m., 12.30, 1 a.m., and then, you know, I got media. I'm not getting out of there until 2, and then, you know, I got to cool down. I got to get treatment. I'm not falling asleep until 5. That next off day isn't really an off day because I'm sleeping until noon and then try to practice a little bit. I mean, there's not really time to do much, obviously. Then that night I got to do my film work and prepare for the next match. So night matches aren't as glamorous as they look.

6:59A lot of times you're spending as much time as the match was to recover and complete your obligations before going to the next day. But that energy at night is crazy. Yeah, it's insane. I mean, I think the craziest thing about New York is even when it's, like, silent in the stadium, there's, like, this buzz, like, the whole time. And you just, like, it's a vibrating feeling, and the noise doesn't stop the whole time you're in there. I don't know if it's because everyone having too many honey deuces. I think it's a combo of the honey deuce, the airplanes flying over. Yeah, 100%. New York. 100%.

7:35So I was reading that you didn't even really, really focus on tennis as young as a lot of your peers do. Were you resistant to it a bit because it was your family sport or was it just you loved football, I read? I mean, a little bit of both. I was definitely resistant to it. But my dad was a player. Older sister was a player. My uncle, who was a great pro as well. And I didn't really want to be a part of that. And I just loved other sports. I mean, I was a kid. Obviously, growing up in the U.S., tennis isn't as big of a sport here. Not the cool sport to play. I loved football. Football was, like, my first love.

8:16Loved that sport more than anything. But my parents had me playing everything from a young age. And tennis was pretty low. uh in my priority list and then i mean i would just go around mess around sometimes and i got pretty good at it and honestly the reason that i started playing more and more is because is the only way i could miss school so like the the tournaments would be on weekends but if you go and you do well you leave on friday you come back on monday that's two days two days in a week that you're missing school so i uh i started playing same motivation as any kid my sister was going to school three days a week i was like i'm gonna do that too and then here we are were you a good quarterback i mean i was young i was young i mean i like to think that i was all right yeah but i stopped playing like 12 13 like i wasn't playing in high school or anything like that but yeah i loved it i played tackle football since i was five years old but like eight years of tackle they don't really allow the kids at five to start playing that young yet but for us we're doing the Oklahoma drill when we could barely walk.

9:21So you gave like a nice, humble answer. I remember like two years ago when I interviewed Anthony Edwards, he said he'd be the best DB in football in a week or some shit. He told me he would return my serve. He did? Yeah. No chance. Yeah, first time I ever met. This is the first thing he said? Yeah. He said, man, I hit that back, man. No chance. And then you went to UF was, again, not like Most of your peers that are at the point you're at now that usually don't go play college tennis, was that due to how late you started? Was it your dad being a coach at UF or was it just you were like, I'm going to school?

10:00Yeah, I mean, I was nowhere good enough to think about going pro. Honestly, going into college, I thought I was going to get redshirted my first year because I went a year early. Like I skipped my senior year of high school, went straight to college. I thought I was going to get redshirted. I ended up not redshirting, sneaking in the lineup. And then my second year was the year that I kind of blew up. But, yeah, I guess my big jump that I made was while I was in college, you know, having so much. We had a great team. and that competition that we had like a healthy at some times team competition, fighting for lineup spots.

10:47And I think that when you have that much talent in the same place training together, it's tough not to improve. And I just thrived in that environment and made so much improvement in 18 months that when I left college, it was like a year and a half before, I was barely going to make it on a college tennis team. and now I'm in the top 100 within a year. Were the guys you were playing with future pros as well? It was just the level of comp in the SEC. Yeah, I mean, the SEC is a joke we have. I mean, Kentucky, the year that I played, had two guys who have been in the top 100. Tennessee had one. We have a guy who's like 200 in the world right now, but I think that across the SEC, A &M had two guys who were top 30.

11:35It was just like, wow, kind of, kind of a joke. And I think that people have kind of started to believe now that college is a path to professional tennis, which, um, wasn't, you know, the way that people thought about tennis before, especially Europeans. They thought if you go to the United States and you go to school to play tennis on a scholarship or whatever, you're kind of kissing your tennis career goodbye or pro pro chances. is goodbye and i think that now they got all these accelerator programs obviously with nil you can fund a couple years maybe several years of your career uh before you even get started it's it's kind of uh silly not to go to college just for a year i actually think you know they people talk so much about like american tennis right and like needing a face for instance but this is great group of American tennis players but then they also talk about like the grassroots of it all and like what tennis is like coming up in America as it is the rest of the world.

12:35I wonder if that'd be good for the game in America for these kids to go and build brands for themselves and build against that competition and go to college in a way that even in college basketball now it's starting to look like the viable thing and the smart thing to do to go to school for a year or two. It's tough I think because tennis or college tennis as of now isn't a revenue generating sport and there's no eyes on it to be honest. So building a brand, that aspect is tough. You had one coming out of college. A little bit. Yeah. A little bit. I think that there are like exceptions. Yeah. But obviously in college basketball is a completely.

13:18Yeah. No, that's true. No one's watching college tennis like that. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that's the tough thing for our sport and also the tough thing for NIL. It's not that sustainable because they're not making any money. I think we're in this bubble right now, and it is working, and these players are getting paid a lot of cash. But I don't know if I see that continuing. It would have to work the other way. It would have to be that, like, you'd have to pay these kids to go play and then start to create the storyline and create the demand And that you're saying, look, we have our three best young Americans playing at Tennessee, Texas, and Florida.

13:56Like, tune in. But I see what you mean. But what about from a development standpoint? You think, looking back on it, even if you had been good enough to go pro, that that development benefited you regardless? It helped me so much. I think regardless of the point that I would have been at, I think it would have been a great move for me to at least go for two years. The tough thing is some of these kids are so good, so young, that it's like, really, am I going to, you know, Nike is going to pay me six figures already. Like, I'm already 300 in the world. Am I going to go to college and waste a year that I can't play pro tournaments?

14:30Like, I mean, we have two 16-year-olds in the qualifying U.S. Open. They train where I train in Orlando. I see them every day, and it's like little kids, you know. But they're in the second round of qualifying at the U.S. Open. Could probably, good chances to qualify. I mean, so I see both sides. Why would you go to college? Are those kids, like, are there great young Americans right now that you see as comp for you over the next five, six years? There is, yeah. The one I like the most is this kid, Jordan Lee, 16, won Junior Wimbledon. He was in the finals of, like, the U.S. Nationals, and he's, yeah.

15:08For his age, yeah, he's generational, I think. So I mentioned before, you know, you were a fan favorite as soon as you got on the court at the open, I think in like 23. Was that for you like, oh, there's a business to this too? Did it hit then? Because you were, I read a finance major, right? You probably always had like an eye for business. But when you get on a stage like that and you feel that energy and love, you realize like quickly like where you sit. And it could be overwhelming or you could be like, yo, this is like a real opportunity for me. Yeah, for me, I think it's a massive opportunity.

15:44And I found pretty quick that the energy that you feel at the U.S. Open, Australian Open, the four Grand Slams is massive compared to the rest of the year. So I'm looking at the business of tennis as we got four tournaments that the world tunes into. And we play 20 other tournaments throughout the year, maybe 25, depending on who you are, that the casual sports fan has no clue what's going on. So obviously, for me, I love playing in front of big crowds. I love playing in front of eyes. I love the hype around the sports, why I feel that I always perform my best at the slams. That can be tough sometimes, playing in the smaller events, but I think that's kind of like my business mind running and the things that I see in our sport.

16:39How does that change, though? Because I've gone to the DC Open. I've gone to the Miami Open. That's one of the best, actually, DC. DC's great. Mark I did a great job with that. Yeah, he did. And they get great competition. My whole thing on it is if there's a Sunday final of the Miami Open, and it's like Arena Coco, or you and Carlos, or Carlos and Sinner, it still doesn't hit for fans the same way because all we're trained to think about is getting the major. And the rankings and points don't hit with fans. Somehow that doesn't translate. I think a big one is obviously broadcasting rights. If you're on national TV, it matters.

17:21I think if you're not on national TV, it doesn't matter. Yeah, but it doesn't matter what a fan knows. It matters when you win the French, right? It's true. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what the disconnect is, because obviously if you go play Miami or you play N.E. Wells or Canada, whatever, any of the Masters 1000s, it's the same competition that you're playing at the slams. But, yeah, there's a lot less aura around those tournaments. I think the rankings have – somehow that doesn't – because those matches have impact on rankings, on impact on like point standings but that's that does that only i don't even know if that matters to you guys like does that do you only think about majors no i mean i'm weird i have a very developmental mindset like i'm thinking more about the level that i'm playing at and where my game's at i look at the rankings a lot less than i'd say the average person i'm not thinking about defending points i don't think about the ranking as much i have certain tournaments that like i want to win 100 and every time i step on the court i'm giving 100 uh just because i'm an entertainer i love playing for the fans but i think that yeah some people maybe don't care as much about the ranking and only care about the slams i think that when you look at legacy and tennis the only thing that people really look at are grand slams it's interesting you said that like I really think about my game that's like a really Kevin Durant answer like always kind of go back to the work always go back to like mastering the craft and it's like a very like tunnel vision thinking there's more to it but it's like easier to just rely on that right in terms of like if I just get better every day everything else will work itself out can you really focus just on that or when you're training, are you thinking like, how am I beating Carlos on this surface?

19:26Or like, what am I doing to be able to return this dude's serve when I'm playing on grass? Yeah, I think it goes together 100%. I think that the game style that I try to play is very complete all-court tennis, so I'm working on pretty much everything. But yeah, in the back of my mind, I'm seeing what it takes to be the best and beat the best just watching these guys over the years and definitely trying to build my game to make those guys at the top feel uncomfortable when they play me which is is not an easy task you know everybody on tour now has such a complete game the guys at the top there's no holes you know it's it's not easy to to really find a way through so you just have to be that good um but for me i care less about my results in terms of how far i went in a tournament or what tournaments i won i like i enjoy more being able to go back and watch a match and be like wow i was doing some ridiculous that match or seeing the level that that i was playing at that gives me a lot more joy than just wins and losses or titles and so that allows me to kind of continuously build my game into what it needs to be and i'm definitely still not there yet but i feel that every year i'm getting a little bit closer so you really watch film yeah you have to that's like across the board players on the tour all watch i mean i don't know about everybody i think that all the greats definitely do um i think some guys are more like i'm gonna focus on my game.

21:07I'm going to impose what I do on the other guy and I don't really care about what their game style is. I think for me I like to know certain tendencies. I like to see the guy that I'm playing. I like to see him get beat before I play him. I want to watch the film and see somebody, whether it was I played him before and I beat him or someone else who has a similar game style to me or who's also left-handed beat them. I want to see how they did it and then kind of go from there. That's interesting. So you watch your upcoming opponent's loss prior to see what it was that got them. Or I mean if I only played them once and they beat me, then I'll watch that too.

21:52I'd rather watch what worked against them than what didn't work, but I think for me that's kind of the way that I can see the game or see things clearly going too much who's the team that's sitting there watching film is it just you and your dad or you have a more elaborate like film study team no yeah we'll do we'll do it separately and then usually like the night before we'll do it separately and then we'll meet in the morning and talk about it or he'll just send me a text and with all the things that he saw it's usually just me sitting in my room ipad or phone solo watching it so having your dad as your coach I would imagine it's weird at any age, right?

22:32So when you're young, you got to balance your dad being your coach and being your dad. But then you become the guy. So the dynamics change again. How have you guys navigated these different eras of the relationship? I mean, yeah, when we were kids, obviously he was tough on me, which I'm very appreciative of. I was a badass little kid. I definitely needed that structure. I was always excited about playing, but really the dedication and everything that I needed to be great at something, things he instilled in me, and then we got to college, and that was the hardest era for sure, because he's a college coach, he's got this group of guys on his team that he needs them to buy in to his philosophy, his way of coaching and he can't do that if they think oh he's got a son on the team he's showing favoritism so so he was on your ass he's on my ass but i understood why he was and why he had to do that but obviously at times that sucks yeah um you know getting scolded or getting in trouble whatever it is uh you know when another guy did the exact same thing nothing happened and it's like bro come on like you're just on me all the time so this this is the easy part now we got a lot of respect for each other obviously just as a coach he was a top player as well he's been a great great coach for so many years and he respects you know me as a player my mind my my tennis mind uh and a lot of times he just lets me do my thing is can it be isolating being on tour as a tennis sweater 100 it's bad right yeah i mean it's tough because all the guys that you're around you're also you're fighting for the same thing yeah so everyone's kind of at arm's length uh obviously i got homies on tour but at the end of the day we're trying to eat from the same plate uh so it can be it can be tough for sure and then yeah i mean we're on we're on the road 30 40 weeks a year so it's not an easy lifestyle and that's another reason why college was probably such a blessing in some ways right you have real teammates yeah you got real teammates not competing against yeah all uh working towards one goal you're playing for something bigger than yourself it's not just you tennis is a very at the professional level is a self-serving sport like everyone thinks the world revolves around you no one cleans up their shit in the locker room like everyone has a team member who's carrying their bags for them or doing it and uh at the end of the day that i don't think that's the real world yeah but that's you know how we see it and so for me to be able to go to college experience that have other obligations outside of just being a tennis player and and develop those relationships with my college teammates was was great and the one thing that sucks about tennis is i love you know being a part of a team and playing team sport so the individual sport is hard to swallow sometimes but everybody that wins always thanks their team in a way that's different than other sports like tennis players like point to their corner and they really thank their team yeah and you could tell when they do it that like we don't know what they've all been through together yeah so in a lot of ways that is your team but the dynamics are different who travels with you like what is made up of your box when we see you at a major?

26:03I mean, I keep it small. You know, at times, like I'll have some, whether it's my mom or my sister or girlfriend, like come in and out. But like my core team, I got my dad who's my coach. I have a strength coach and I have a physio. And some people have big teams, a lot of people, but that's kind of like my every day, every week of the year team that I ride with. I think the reason that we thank those guys and it means a lot is because these guys are away from their families. They're living the lives that we're living. They're on the road for 30 weeks a year. It's a serious commitment compared to any other job where you get to if you're working for a team, you get to be at home more than half the time.

26:52You get to stay with your family, whatever. Normal life is not really a thing for these guys that travel with you and kind of spend your life spend their life helping you i think that's why it means so much i once sat in a box of a player who's won a major um i don't know if i'm giving a secret away so i won't say the name and the people in their box all had these ipads out like doing in real time yeah and i'd never seen that before what do you have something like that going on yeah i mean the the tech and tennis now is kind of a joke they have a few different i think it's called tennis iq or something like that and so in real time your team in the box can see all the stats from the match the points in the in the court where the ball is landing your shots the other player's shots whether it's serve location um return so Yeah, first serve percentage, what you're winning off your first serve, I mean, everything.

27:52So it's definitely a tool that you can use when you're on the court. I think that a lot of times probably maybe 5 % of that is actually being relayed to the player because to be that deep in the weeds while you're trying to be out there and compete is not possible. But I think for the coaches to be able to like maybe they see one glaring thing there and tell their player to make an adjustment, I think that's what it's best for. Is that helpful, them being able to communicate with you during the match? Did you play ever when they couldn't? Yeah. You could. You did. Well, not professionally. Since I've been a pro, you could.

28:31And obviously, it's something that I had in college as well. You could get coached. So I was kind of used to it. I think at a young age, it's good to become an independent thinker and kind of learn to problem solve when you're out on the court. I think it's really important for just your development as a tennis player to be able to find solutions when you're out there by yourself. And depending on the relationship, it could do more harm than good. I mean, everyone is completely different, but some people are very animated when they play or get pissed off when someone tells them the wrong thing or tells them something that doesn't work and they blow a gasket.

29:13I mean, it can go bad quick. I think that the coach is going to be really careful with what they say and how they say it or have a very, very good and clear relationship with the player. But, yeah, I think it's a tricky one. It's such a funny, like, subplot happening during the matches. Like, certain players look over after every point. Yeah. And they're either just, like, doing this to their box or the box going like this. They're, like, telling you to calm down. Some guys just yell at their box. That's just their thing. You know, like I'm going to parade you guys the whole match, and that's how I'm going to deal with the stress or pressure.

29:49And then I'll thank you afterwards. Exactly. And then I'll thank my team. That wouldn't fly with my box. You talked about watching film and mastering your craft. Where would you say your game has to keep evolving? I think that tennis is a sport that can actually, like, if you're athletic or explosive, it takes away some of that advantage, and you have to learn to control it with, I guess you could say how small the court is. Sometimes it feels massive out there, but you really do have to learn how to control your body. The deceleration, the movement, I think, is something that I still have so much room to grow in, even though I feel that out there I'm a great athlete.

30:28But to be able to really refine that and become one of the best movers in the world on court is a different ballgame. So I think that's something that's huge for me. and then I still see parts of my game that are just raw. I think that my return of serve still can get so much better. My serve can get so much better. Your serve? Which I think people are always telling me like, oh, my gosh, you know, how are you saying that? You have the best serve.

31:02But this is one of the things where you look at the stats and I have, you know, one of the most – my serve moves the most. I have one of the fastest serves on tour, but I don't have one of the most accurate serves on tour. And I think that that's just another piece that if I have both of those, it's the whole package. Can you be as accurate, you think, at that speed? It's tough. That's a tough thing. You know, you have to kind of find the speed that you can be accurate and then slowly kind of ramp it up. and then it's also tough to be as accurate when you're hitting the serve with as much spin as I'm hitting it with because there's so much sliding across the racket that the ball is doing to create that spin.

31:47So it's not an easy task for sure, especially the way that I go at my serve, but I think it's something that I'm just striving for. Do you pay attention to the speed during the match? Yeah. But for me, I use it as a tool because I know certain serves that I hit to be able to make it. Like I said, I need to hit at certain speeds. So for me, my serve's never coming off too slow. It's usually like, okay, that one's coming off too fast. I need to dial it down. Like if I'm hitting my breaking ball, my cutter away from the guy and I'm hitting it 120, then I know that I'm not getting it to break enough away from him.

32:29It needs to be more between 110 and 105. or if my flat surface coming off 145 every time like all right i'm juiced up there's no way i'm hitting my spot if i'm going almost 150 miles an hour every time i need to be in the high 130s so i think that's kind of how i use it which is annoying because 80 of the radars that we use throughout the year are wrong really yeah the terrible i mean the tech is why what have you What have you seen in practice? What have you marked yourself at? No, I never check in practice. You don't? But here is accurate. DC is accurate.

33:11Usually Cincinnati is accurate. Everywhere else, it's just like. America. Look at that. I guess we got the best radar technology here. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it just feels like it's shooting out a random number. that you know you're sometimes you're like that ain't 151 that was 158 like you feel it no but like at wimbledon for example i'll hit a serve that i know was in the 120s and on the board it shows 153 and they're like oh you know fastest serve hit at wimbledon i'm like no no it wasn't for real yeah 30 off like that yeah i mean i think it's tough with all the moving parts i don't know exactly where they have the radar guns located but yeah it's uh there's a lot of variable there And what about the mental sides of the game?

33:57I was talking to CeCe Sabathia about young baseball players needing sports psychiatrists or why that's so important. Because in a similar way, being up to bat is so isolating, right? And you're only going to hit it 30 % of the time. So mentally, how do you fathom that to begin with? I would imagine there's a big mental aspect to your sport that can break somebody. how important is that role and like continuing to harness that yeah 100 i mean you have guys in the top 100 who uh have a losing record throughout the year many and i think that that dealing with losses almost every week you know if you're not winning titles you're losing every single week that you play as can be tough to deal with especially when it's all on you in an individual sport.