More Than a Match: Tiafoe, Shelton and the Legacy of Arthur Ashe

Tonight, history is unfolding inside Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton — two Black American men — are facing each other in the US Open semifinals, with one guaranteed a place in Sunday’s championship match. But on a court named for the man who broke one of tennis’ biggest racial barriers, this is about far more than who wins.

Arthur Ashe became the first Black man to win a Grand Slam singles championship when he captured the inaugural US Open in 1968. Nearly three decades later, the US Open’s main stadium was named in his honor, recognizing not only his achievements in tennis but his work as a civil-rights and humanitarian advocate.

Now, 58 years after Ashe’s breakthrough, Tiafoe and Shelton are creating another chapter of Black tennis history on the court that bears his name.

The winner will become the first Black American man to reach the US Open singles final since Ashe did so in 1972. Waiting there will be Alexander Zverev, who advanced earlier Friday.

And that is where the moment could become even larger.

If Tiafoe or Shelton defeats Zverev in Sunday’s championship match, he would become the first Black American man to win the US Open men’s singles title since Ashe’s historic victory in 1968 — and the first American man of any race to win the tournament since Andy Roddick in 2003.

The symbolism would be difficult to ignore: a Black American champion raising the US Open trophy inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, generations after Ashe opened doors that once seemed impossible to enter.

For younger Black athletes watching around the country, the significance stretches beyond tennis. Representation becomes especially powerful when history is not simply remembered but visibly continued. Ashe once represented possibility. Serena and Venus Williams expanded that possibility for another generation. Today, Tiafoe and Shelton are showing another generation of Black boys that men’s tennis can belong to them, too.

Whatever happens tonight, history has already been made.

But if one of these two Americans finishes the journey on Sunday, Arthur Ashe Stadium could witness something close to a full-circle moment:

A legacy created by Arthur Ashe. A stadium carrying his name. And another Black American man standing at its center as US Open champion.