No nasty surprise this time, Benny?

Shelton has just been a major disappointment during the Sunshine Double. He was sick at the start of the swing, fine, but in Miami he had no excuse at all.

Losing to Tien at Indian Wells isn’t a big deal, especially given Shelton’s condition, he could have retired. We were expecting him to come back hungry in Miami in fast conditions, and he went out in the first round against Shevchenko, who played an incredible match, nothing to say there, but it’s still very disappointing from Shelton, especially in terms of content where he’s nonexistent on return. I’d say I saw the bad version of him again, the one where he loses patience very quickly and tries anything, then suddenly starts just pushing the ball and waiting for the error to the extreme. He’s still searching for himself, you can feel he’s not confident in his game. He’s coming back to a tournament he won in 2024 after beating Bergs, Nakashima, Etcheverry, Tiafoe, almost worthy of an ATP 500! Not surprising given the conditions on this clay that isn’t really clay. The bounce is high, the kick serve really bites hard, and Shelton has quite a bit of spin on his forehand too, this is the right time to bounce back!

He’ll have to be careful because Zhang seems to be a player he struggles against. The Chinese beat him once in Rome and pushed him to 5 sets at the Australian Open a few years ago. I loved his first round (against a disastrous Pinnington), he calmed down and added more arc to his shots, he can play very well on clay and has already had great results on it! With his always solid serving quality to protect him, Shelton will need to be inspired on return, otherwise he’ll once again find himself having to play tiebreaks, and given how low his confidence is right now, I’m not sure he’ll get through in that scenario...