There is a number that has not appeared in any of the previews of Sunday’s US Open final that have led with the drought, the stadium, the flags, or the fact that Ben Shelton has beaten the defending champion and his best friend in the same week. The number is five, and it is the number of times Alexander Zverev has played Ben Shelton, and it is also the number of times Alexander Zverev has won.

Five-nil. Including a straight-sets win at the ATP Finals last November. Including a final in Munich. Including, per the ATP’s own ledger, four meetings in a single year, none of which went Shelton’s way. Shelton has never taken a match off the man he plays for the championship on Sunday afternoon, and the crowd that will spend two hours trying to will him to one has, as far as anyone can tell, not been told.

Who Zverev Is

Zverev is the top seed. He is 29. He won Roland Garros in June — his first major, at the fourth attempt — and lost the Wimbledon final in July, and Sunday is his third Grand Slam final of the year and sixth of his career. He came through Sonego, Halys, Tabilo, Darderi, van de Zandschulp, and Khachanov to get here, the last four in straight sets, and he has looked, for a fortnight, like the most complete player left in a draw that Alcaraz and Sinner were supposed to own.

He is also the man who, in 2020, on this court, led Dominic Thiem two sets to love in the US Open final and lost in five. It was the first major final of his life. He has not forgotten it and neither has anyone else, and the tournament’s own preview pages mention it as though it were a matter of public record, which it is. Five finals, one title. The best player never to have won a major, until he won one, and then the best player to have won exactly one.

Who Shelton Is

Shelton is 23, left-handed, the eighth seed, and playing in the first Grand Slam final of his life. He beat Griekspoor, Hurkacz, Shapovalov — who complained to the umpire about his grunting and got booed for it — Tsitsipas, Alcaraz in a fifth-set tiebreak that ended at 3:33 in the morning, and Tiafoe in four. He has been, over eight days, the story of the tournament, and on Sunday he is the story of the country: the first American man in the final since Fritz two years ago, the first with a real chance to end the drought that began when Roddick won here in 2003.

He serves harder than anyone in the draw. He has, this week, discovered a return game. He is playing the best tennis of his life and he will be playing it in front of the loudest room in the sport, which has been waiting twenty-three years to have someone to make this specific noise for.

None of which has, to date, been enough against Zverev.

The Crowd, Again

The Arthur Ashe crowd has been the subject of four articles on this site in two weeks, and this is where all four converge. It screamed through Gauff’s overhead. It chanted hecklers out of Louis Armstrong. It booed Shapovalov for complaining about Shelton. It filed out on the new No. 1 before her interview. It is, in the language of the tournament’s own marketing, a participant — and on Sunday it will participate, for two or three hours, against a German who has been 5-0 against its favorite and will now be asked to make it 6-0 in the middle of it.

Zverev has played in front of hostile crowds. He has never played in front of this one, in a final, with the only American men’s major in a generation on the line. The previews all say the same thing — the whole of New York is backing one side of the net — and they say it as if it is Shelton’s advantage. It is. It is also the single most difficult thing anyone has asked Alexander Zverev to do in a tennis match, and he has, to be fair to him, done difficult things before. Just not, historically, in the fifth set of a US Open final.

The Money, Since Everyone Asks

$5.5 million to the winner, $2.8 million to the loser, 2,000 ranking points against 1,300. The gap between winning and losing this match is, for either man, larger than most players’ annual earnings. For Shelton it is also the difference between being the best young American since Roddick and being Roddick’s successor, which are not the same sentence.

The Pick

The record says Zverev. The form says Zverev. The stadium says Shelton, and will say it at a volume that has, this fortnight, changed the course of matches it was not supposed to change. One of two things breaks on Sunday: a 5-0 head-to-head, or a 23-year drought.

Two o’clock. Bring earplugs. Not for the tennis.

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