Shelton joins Alcaraz, Djokovic and Bublik with clay, grass and hard titles in one season as he takes Stuttgart
Three sets every match, the first set dropped every time, and the title at the end of it: Ben Shelton beat Taylor Fritz 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 to win in Stuttgart for a first grass-court crown and a third title of 2026, extending his winning run over Fritz to three.
Ben Shelton, Stuttgart 2026 | © Marijan Murat/DPA/SIPA
American Ben Shelton capped a gruelling week with the most fitting of finishes on Sunday, edging compatriot Taylor Fritz 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 to win the Boss Open and claim the first grass-court title of his career.
The top seed had gone the distance in every match in Stuttgart, and the final was no different. Shelton dropped serve in the third game of the opening set but recovered the break to take it 6-4, only for Fritz to hit back emphatically in the second, breaking in the second game, surging to a 3-0 lead and pulling away to level the match 6-2 with a further break at 5-2.
The decider turned on the finest of margins: Shelton saved two break points at 3-3, held his nerve, and broke for 5-4 before serving it out on his first match point. Fritz, remarkably, won more points across the match – 85 to Shelton’s 72 – a measure of how little separated them.
Shelton: “A lot of stress”
“I’m just exhausted, to be honest,” Shelton said afterwards. “A lot of stress. I didn’t make things easy on myself.” He was generous about an opponent who, for a stretch of the final, he found impossible to handle. “Taylor for a period of the match today was completely unplayable,” he said, before framing the week as a foundation. “Being tough, getting through the really tough matches day in and day out is the first step to getting to where I want to be.”
That Shelton reached the final at all was a study in resilience. He was taken to three sets in every round and dropped the opening set each time – against Marcos Giron in the second round (6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (5)), Japanese Sho Shimabukuro in the quarter-finals (4-6, 6-3, 6-4) and Czech fourth seed Jiri Lehecka in a marathon semi-final (6-7 (4), 7-6 (14), 7-6 (6)) in which he saved two match points and won a second-set tie-break 16-14.
Players who win a tour title after losing the first set in every match to the final are a rarity: it had last been done by Alexandre Muller at 2025 Hong Kong, and before him by Bublik at 2024 Montpellier, in a lineage tracing back to Arthur Ashe at the 1975 WCT Finals.
6th wion on Tour for Shelton
The title was Shelton’s sixth on tour and his third of 2026, and the win over Fritz was his ninth over a top-10 opponent. It also extended his recent dominance of the rivalry – Shelton has now won their last three meetings and has not lost to Fritz since 2023.
Their February final in Dallas, which Shelton won after saving three match points, remains the more dramatic of the two, but Sunday confirmed the direction of the head-to-head. The win also made Shelton the fourth man this decade, after Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic and Alexander Bublik, to win tour-level titles on clay, grass and hard court in a single season.
For Fritz, visibly very disappointed, the defeat denied him a notable double. The second seed, ranked No 9, had been seeking an 11th tour title and a sixth on grass, a first since Eastbourne last year, and had he won he would have become only the second man in the Open era to defend a Stuttgart title, after Muster in 1995-96.
Most prolific champions
He had reached the final by beating Kazakh third seed Alexander Bublik (6-4, 6-4) for his first top-20 win of the season, after edging Italian Mattia Bellucci (5-7, 7-5, 7-5) and Spaniard Martin Landaluce (6-7 (4), 7-5, 7-6 (3)) in three sets earlier in the week. The loss left him winless against the top 10 in 2026 and still chasing a first such win since beating Lorenzo Musetti at last year’s ATP Finals.
The title also lifted Shelton among the season’s most prolific champions: his third trophy of the year took him alongside Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev on two — the count led by Jannik Sinner on five. Shelton, with four matches in his first appearance at the event, said the run had given him hope heading into Halle and Wimbledon.
