Two UTS champions will meet in a Grand Slam final for the first time

The US Open final on Sunday will be contested by two UTS winners, which has never happened at a Grand Slam before. Alexander Zverev, nicknamed The Lion in 2020, and Ben Shelton, The Mountain, both came through on Friday to set it up.

Zverev won the second edition, staged at the Mouratoglou Academy in 2020. Shelton has played three times and won UTS Frankfurt in 2024, the latest time in Nîmes in 2025.

Zverev, the top seed, beat Karen Khachanov 6-3, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (6) in a match far tighter than the scoreline. Khachanov won more points across the second set and lost it, and led the third-set tie-break 4-1 with two set points before losing that too. “He won three more points in my entire match,” the Russian said afterwards. “He won the important ones.”

Shelton then beat Frances Tiafoe 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 7-5 in the night session, losing the opening set and winning 14 of the next 20 games to reach the first Grand Slam final of his career.

It completes a fortnight that already belonged to UTS history. All four US Open semifinalists had played the Tour, another first.

Tiafoe, Big Foe, competed at UTS Los Angeles in 2023. Khachanov, The Machine, joined the family this year at Bastide UTS Nîmes.

Zverev reaches his third consecutive Grand Slam final of the season and the sixth of his career, having won Roland-Garros in June. Shelton, 23, is in his first, and is the first Black American man to reach a US Open final since Arthur Ashe in 1972.

The German has won all five of their previous meetings. They play on Sunday, 4:00 pm local time.