Ben Shelton remembers the exact phrase that sprang into his mind near the end of his first-round match at Wimbledon this year, an irksome loss to Otto Virtanen of Finland.
When he led 8-5 in the fifth-set tiebreak, he looked up at the scoreboard and thought, “What is this bulls—?”
Shelton had already let a two-sets-to-one lead slip away. If he and Virtanen had been playing a normal, seven-point tiebreak, rather than one of the 10-point versions that decide fifth sets, he would have already won. The American felt he should have already won.
It didn’t take long for the shock to fade. When it did, patterns began to emerge as Shelton analyzed the match. Mental lapses. Sub-par returning. Poor point construction on break points in his favor.
Those are three large reasons why Shelton, 23, has had a mixed bag of a year.
The question now is what Shelton does with this self-awareness.
