LONDON – Four points. Three aces. About a minute. That's all it took for Ben Shelton to wrap up a 6-2, 7-5, 6-4 victory over Rinky Hijikata on Friday in a second-round Wimbledon match suspended the night before because of darkness at 5-4 in the third set.
“I wasn’t really going for four aces,” the 10th-seeded Shelton said.
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Sure, Ben.
Either way, the two-time Grand Slam semifinalist was in a much better mood than he was on Thursday night around 9:30 p.m., when he didn't agree with the decision to stop right as he was about to try to serve out the victory at No. 2 Court. There are no artificial lights there, plus Shelton said he was told that the electronic line-calling system was about to stop working.
He looked rather animated, and someone came between Shelton and the chair umpire, although the player said Friday that wasn't really necessary.
“I guess when he saw a guy my size walking quickly towards the umpire, maybe he thought I was ready to throw hands or something. I definitely wasn’t,” Shelton said. “I got over it pretty quickly. ... It probably looked more tense than it was."
The American, who reached the final four at the 2023 U.S. Open and this year's Australian Open, and Hijikata, an Australian ranked 87th, returned to the same stadium a little less than 16 hours later after the suspension for what turned out to be just one game.
“A little bit bizarre,” Hijikata said.
After a warmup period quite a bit longer than the resumption of actual play, Shelton began with a 141 mph ace. The 22-year-old left-hander then hit a second serve that resulted in a framed return by Hijikata, followed with an ace at 140 mph and one more at 118 mph to end things quickly.
“I’m just happy with the way I handled it coming out today and taking care of my business,” said Shelton, who will face 105th-ranked Marton Fucsovics of Hungary for a chance to reach the fourth round at the All England Club for the second consecutive year. “It’s never ideal, mentally, having to wake up another day and be on and know that it’s a match day. Obviously I went out there prepared to play 2 1/2 sets. You can’t just go out there (and) be like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to hold.’ What happens if you don’t?”
Right before things were halted Thursday — both players thought they should have stopped sooner, because it was tough to see for a while and slippery on the grass — Shelton held three match points while leading 5-3 and at love-40 on Hijikata's serve. Hijikata grabbed the next five points to extend the contest.
But not for long.
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Howard Fendrich has been the AP’s tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich. More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis