For twenty-three years, American men’s tennis has approached the Grand Slam final the way a cat approaches a bath. Andy Roddick won the US Open in 2003. Since then: nothing. Not a single major title for a country that produces more tennis courts, tennis academies, tennis parents, and tennis podcasts than the rest of the world combined. Taylor Fritz made the final here in 2024 and lost. That was the high-water mark. A generation of American boys grew up watching Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and then Alcaraz and Sinner, take turns holding trophies in their own country, and the national response was to build another academy in Florida.

On Friday night, the United States solved this problem with a piece of tactical genius so simple it is astonishing nobody thought of it before: put two Americans in the same semifinal.

The Matchup

Ben Shelton, the eighth seed, is 23 and left-handed and serves like he is trying to put the ball through the back wall. Frances Tiafoe, the eleventh seed, is 28 and right-handed and plays like he is narrating the match to himself. They have met four times. They have traded US Open wins — Shelton in the 2023 quarterfinals, Tiafoe in five sets in 2024 — and Friday will be the fifth meeting and the first at a major since.

Whoever wins is in Sunday’s final. That is guaranteed. The other semifinal — Alexander Zverev, the world No. 1, who won Roland Garros and reached the Wimbledon final this year, against Karen Khachanov — will supply the opponent, and the opponent will be very good, and none of that matters for the purposes of this paragraph. An American man is in the US Open final. The drought is not over. But for the first time in a long time it has an appointment.

The Bigger Thing

Here is the part that is not a joke, and should not be treated as one.

The winner on Friday will be the first Black American man to reach a US Open final since Arthur Ashe in 1972. He will be the first Black American man to reach any Grand Slam final since 1996. The stadium they will play in is named after Ashe. The tournament has been staged in that stadium since 1997 — which is to say for the entire span during which no Black American man has played for the title inside it. Fifty-four years since Ashe. Thirty since anyone. Two men, both of whom grew up in this country’s tennis system and came through it anyway, are about to end that on the biggest court in the sport.

Whatever else this tournament has been — and it has been ring lights and cannabis and 3:33 AM — it is also going to be that.

How They Got Here, Which Was Not Gracefully

Both men arrive at Friday by way of the most exhausting possible route, and both have been in this publication already this fortnight for reasons that were not entirely about tennis.

Tiafoe, in the quarterfinals, went down two sets to Alex Michelsen and came back to win in a fifth-set tiebreak, then described his own performance with the candor that makes him the best interview on tour: “It wasn’t good, let’s put it that way. It wasn’t good. Three out of five is a blessing.” Earlier in the year, at Roland Garros, we watched him inform Jaime Faria at the net that he was “not hard, bro.” He has spent the summer being, by turns, the most dangerous and most exasperating American in the draw, frequently in the same set.

Shelton, in the quarterfinals, beat the defending champion Carlos Alcaraz in a fifth-set tiebreak that ended at 3:33 in the morning, the latest finish in the history of the tournament, in front of a stadium that had mostly gone home. A week before that, in the third round, Denis Shapovalov complained to the chair umpire that Shelton’s grunts were inconsistent, and was booed by Arthur Ashe for it. Shelton, for the record, has not changed the grunts.

So: one man who barely survived, one man who barely slept. Friday night.

The Schedule, Naturally

It is a night match. Of course it is. This tournament has produced three finishes after 2 AM and one after 3:30, and the reasons — two matches per night session, a 7 PM start the tournament says cannot move because New Yorkers cannot arrive any earlier — have not changed since the first week. Friday is semifinal day, so the arithmetic is kinder than a quarterfinal night — no five-setter has to wait for another five-setter. But Shelton has played a four-and-a-half-hour match that finished at breakfast on Wednesday, and Tiafoe has played five sets from two down, and the tournament is asking both to be at their best under lights at roughly the hour their bodies have been trained, this week, to fall apart.

The USTA will say it is evaluating this. We are aware.

What To Watch

The serve against the return. Shelton’s first serve is the biggest weapon in the draw; Tiafoe’s return, when he is engaged, is one of the best on tour, and he has been engaged for about a set and a half of every match he has played here. If Tiafoe gets the serve back into play the rallies favor him. If he does not, the match is two hours of Shelton winning tiebreaks.

Also watch the crowd, which will have a problem it has not had in twenty-three years: both players are theirs. New York, which has spent two weeks booing Shapovalov, chanting “kick them out” at hecklers, and generally treating tennis as a participatory sport, will have to pick. It will pick loudly, it will pick both, and it will change its mind several times. That, honestly, may be the best part.

Sunday, one of them plays for the title. Friday, they play each other. America has done it. It just needed two guys.

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