Gone in 70 seconds: Ben Shelton finishes bizarre match and finds the funny side | Wimbledon 2025
When you had to wait a whole night to end your match, what is 70 seconds with friends? Three AS and an uninhabitable kick service did the job for Ben Shelton while he sealed his place in the third round on Wimbledon on Friday with a 6-2, 7-5, 6-4 victory against Rinky Hijikata, smiling on his face far from the understandable frustration he showed when the match was suspended late at night.
The match had been controversially suspended at 9:29 p.m. Thursday evening, with Shelton who was to win. The two players had been in discussion with the referee, Nacho Forcadell, earlier in the set to see if the match could be suspended because the court became slippery, but the pair played until the announcement was made at 5-4, which encouraged the Anners of the crowd.
The All England club told the Guardian that the match had been canceled because of the discoloration of the light, while Shelton said that he had received a “five-minute warning until the Hawk-Eye decreases”. “This included change, so [he said] There would not be enough time to finish the game. I said to him: “I only need 60 seconds”. It’s a bit of my goal when I went there today. »»
Shelton said the referee told him that he didn’t want the line call system to decrease in the middle of a match. “At that time, I am not as upset by this decision. It was a difficult decision that was forced because of what they did earlier. ”
When the match was canceled, the supervisor spread his arms while Shelton shaped to approach the referee, blocking his way to the chair. “I don’t think I was never disrespectful on the ground,” he said. “I try to pass my point of view. I suppose that when he saw a guy my size walking quickly to the referee, he may have thought that I was ready to throw his hands or something. I was certainly not.
“I might assume that I should apologize to Nacho if he felt frightened on the chair. I was upset in the moment. I wanted to pass my point of view. I think he was just trying to defuse [the situation] And keep me away from Nacho. I overcome it fairly quickly, then we talked to the gymnasium afterwards.
“I just wanted to give them my thoughts on the situation. They gave me theirs on why it all happened. It didn’t really degenerate. It probably looked more tense than it was, everything holding back or staying in front of me. No, it was nothing. “
Despite the brevity of the action on Friday, Shelton said he was ready to play two and a half sets if necessary and denied that he wanted to send a message by finishing things so quickly.
“The only thing I thought today was to keep the service, the way I was going to hold the service and put it in my mind that it was going to be difficult and that it was going to make each return, and I was going to have to find stuff from the basic line or the net,” he said.
“It ended up looking at this in this way because of the way it turned out, but it was not at all in my head. I was not trying anything to do anything. I was just in competition, trying to win the match.”
Shelton will play Marton Fucsovics then after the Hungarians beat Gaël Monfils in five sets, in another match held.
