{"id":43324,"date":"2026-02-16T04:45:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T09:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2026\/02\/16\/shelton-defeats-fritz-in-us-tournament-to-win-dallas-open\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T04:45:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T09:45:17","slug":"shelton-defeats-fritz-in-us-tournament-to-win-dallas-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2026\/02\/16\/shelton-defeats-fritz-in-us-tournament-to-win-dallas-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Shelton defeats Fritz in US tournament to win Dallas Open"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

FRISCO, Texas — In a matchup of the world’s highest-ranked American men on Sunday, Ben Shelton defeated top-seeded Taylor Fritz in three sets at the Dallas Open, saving three match points before finishing off another rally for the title.<\/p>\n

The No. 2 seed in the ATP Rankings and No. 9 in the ATP Rankings had dropped the first set in each of the last three rounds of the tournament, but came back to beat Fritz 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 in the first meeting between top seeds since the tournament moved to Dallas in 2022.<\/p>\n

Shelton improved to 4-0 in the ATP finals, defeating world No. 7 Fritz after drawing the first two matches. The 23-year-old won the title after losing to Jannik Sinner in straight sets in the Australian Open quarter-finals last month.<\/p>\n

After saving three match points to take the third set to 5-5, Shelton had three chances to shut out Fritz while serving for the match. Although Fritz saved the first two, the 10-time ATP champion was unable to match his opponent by saving the third.<\/p>\n

“This was a crazy game to be a part of,” Shelton said. I thought the level was amazing.<\/p>\n

Fritz’s dominant serving in his semi-final win over Marin Cilic carried over into the first set of the final, where the 28-year-old won both tiebreaks in straight sets and never faced a break point. Fritz broke Shelton in the left-hander’s first service game and won 12 of his first 13 service points.<\/p>\n

Shelton broke Fritz’s serve late in the second set to take a 5-3 lead and turned the match on its head, and did it again early in the third.<\/p>\n

Fritz had three chances to end the match when he broke back at 3-3 and led 5-4 on Shelton’s serve. Shelton brought it to deuce with an overhead smash from the net and a backhand winner that caught Fritz’s reverse.<\/p>\n

On Fritz’s final match point, Shelton volleyed back to deuce and continued to hold serve with a backhand volley into the open court, with both players on net.<\/p>\n

“I think I would be more upset if I had three match points and was told I lost,” Fritz said. “It hurts, but I don’t have too many regrets about playing on match point, so I feel like it doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.”<\/p>\n

A double fault by Fritz (the only fault of the match for both players) gave Shelton three break points at 5-5. Shelton had a second break chance when Fritz’s forehand went long.<\/p>\n

An ace on his second serve gave Shelton three match points, and Fritz’s rushing return attempt on Shelton’s approach shot fell short, allowing Shelton to convert his second.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FRISCO, Texas — In a matchup of the world’s highest-ranked American men on Sunday, Ben Shelton defeated top-seeded Taylor Fritz in three sets at the Dallas Open, saving three match points before finishing off another rally for the title. The No. 2 seed in the ATP Rankings and No. 9 in the ATP Rankings had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[4348,27,2619,32,720,24,35,30],"class_list":{"0":"post-43324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-defeats","10":"tag-fritz","11":"tag-open","12":"tag-shelton","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-tournament","15":"tag-win"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}