On Sunday, September 13, Ben Shelton played a three-and-a-half-hour US Open final. On Thursday the Laver Cup announced he had withdrawn from its London edition and been replaced by Brandon Nakashima. On Friday, September 18, he was due on an indoor hard court in Prague to play Jiří Lehečka for the United States in a Davis Cup qualifier. That is five days between the biggest match of his life and a best-of-five for his country, on a different surface, on a different continent, in a tie his country lost 3-2 to the same opponent last year and would very much like to win.

No reason was given for the Laver Cup withdrawal. None was needed. You can only be in one place, and Shelton picked the place with a flag.

The Other Americans

Here is the thing about the American Davis Cup team that showed up in Prague. When the USTA announced it, the squad was Shelton, Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul, and Christian Harrison — as strong a four as the country has fielded in a decade. By the time the plane left, it was Shelton, Learner Tien, Martin Damm Jr., Harrison, and Austin Krajicek. Fritz and Paul had withdrawn.

Paul has an elbow. He hurt it at the US Open, and it has taken him out of the Laver Cup too — Francisco Cerúndolo has his spot on Team World — so his case is simple and sad and not really anyone’s fault.

Fritz’s case is more interesting. Fritz withdrew from the Davis Cup tie in Prague. Fritz is playing the Laver Cup in London the following weekend. He is on the Team World roster alongside de Minaur, Bublik, Cerúndolo, Tien, and now Nakashima, under Andre Agassi. He is the highest-ranked American in the exhibition and not on the plane for the national team.

So: one American chose the country over the exhibition. One chose the exhibition over the country. One had an elbow. And the country’s Davis Cup hopes now rest on a 23-year-old who has not had a day off since the first week of September, a 20-year-old making his debut, and a doubles pair.

The Argument For Doing Neither

Last Word on Tennis published a piece on Friday morning, as the tie was starting, headlined “Ben Shelton Should Skip Davis Cup and Laver Cup.” Its argument was not about either event:

“The issue is not the Davis Cup or the Laver Cup. It’s that Shelton has just put his body through everything to get to a final and he’s not taking any time away from the game to recover and process what happened.”

The schedule it lays out is genuinely alarming. Shelton had played 53 tour-level matches before Prague. He played a quarterfinal that ended at 3:33 in the morning, a four-set semifinal two nights later, and a final on Sunday. Davis Cup is Friday and Saturday. Then — had he not withdrawn — the Laver Cup in London the weekend after. Then Tokyo, which starts September 28. Then Shanghai on October 7. There is not a week in that sequence without a match, and there is not a match in that sequence that does not matter to somebody.

“One of the adjustments every elite player eventually has to make,” the piece goes on, “is understanding that more tennis is not always better tennis.”

It is the adjustment Fritz has, apparently, made. It is the adjustment Shelton has, apparently, not. And it is worth noticing that the sport punishes the second choice and rewards the first only in the long run, which is the run nobody at 23 is thinking about.

The Calendar Nobody Owns

The reason three of the four best American men are pulling out of things is not that they are soft. It is that the calendar has three different owners and none of them talk. The Grand Slams belong to the Slams. The tour belongs to the ATP. Davis Cup belongs to the ITF, and the Laver Cup belongs to a company co-founded by Roger Federer, and each of them schedules the week after the US Open as though the other three did not exist. A player who wants to do everything he is asked to do in September has to be in New York, then Prague, then London, then Tokyo, and the only mechanism for saying no to any of it is a press release with no reason attached.

Shelton, this week, did the thing the sport says it wants — he put on the shirt, he flew, he turned up to play for his country five days after the worst loss of his life. Fritz did the thing the sport also says it wants — he protected his body and kept his commitment to the event that pays. Both of them will be criticized for it by somebody. Neither of them made the calendar.

Nakashima, for his part, said replacing Shelton in London was “an event I’ve always wanted to play in” and that he “can’t wait to be on Team World, competing with the others and playing for Andre and Pat.” He is the only person in this story who got exactly what he wanted, and he got it because somebody else could not be in two places at once.

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