Shelton rides improved all-around game to NBO title defence

MONTREAL — With booming serves and punishing forehands, but also swinging volleys and precise drop shots, Ben Shelton became a repeat champion at the National Bank Open presented by Rogers.

His 6-3, 7-6 (4) win over Brandon Nakashima in Montreal Thursday gave him his fourth title of 2026, and the variety he displayed to achieve it lent credence to the notion he’s prepared to hang with tennis titans.

Shelton, who came to Montreal ranked 10th in the world and left ranked sixth, didn’t face any of those titans in this tournament. And the predictability of his game didn’t enable him to fare any better against them than anyone else through his first four years on tour, going a combined 1-10 against top-ranked Jannik Sinner, world No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz and 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic.

But the six-foot-four lefty is no longer just a huge-serving, forehand-pounding slugger. His performance since the beginning of 2026 has shown how he's also developed finesse — and the type of all-around game needed to challenge the world’s best players.

It was showcased in championship performances in Dallas, Munich and Stuttgart earlier this year, and it was on full display over these 10 days in Montreal, where his ace count fell slightly below average but his precision on every other shot rose.

This final was an exclamation mark on that point, as Shelton mixed in mild, 144 km/h serves out of Nakashima’s reach with 230 km/h flat bombs into his body. He deftly dropped balls he’d normally crush with his forehand. He leaned on exceptional athleticism to conjure miraculous on-the-run counters to shots Nakashima seemingly had him beat with.

The gruelling baseliner also approached the net 10 times and won eight of those points. And instead of going for instant winners, he played with the type of restraint, patience and precision champions do, making only 12 unforced errors over his hour and 27 minutes on the court.

“Tennis-wise, this has been one of the best weeks of my life,” said Shelton in his address to the sold-out crowd at IGA Stadium. “I played some of the best tennis that I’ve ever played and to be able to put that on display in front of you has been an honour.”

The 23-year-old didn’t drop a set through wins over Jenson Brooksby, Zizou Bergs, Joao Fonseca and top-20 talents Jakub Mensik and Learner Tien, and he didn’t even drop his serve against Nakashima, who’d run to the semifinals of Washington before reaching his first Masters 1000 final in Montreal.

“He’s of course established now and inside the top 10,” the San Diego native said of the Atlanta-born Shelton. “This week, he’s been playing at an insane level. It really has been incredible to see his career so far, and he’s still even young, still has his whole career ahead of him. He’s going to be a top player for his whole career… Definitely think he could be top of the game for sure.”

Shelton has shown that potential ever since leaving the University of Florida in 2022. And the growth he’s exhibited since notching his first ATP tournament win in Tokyo in 2023 has been striking.

“Of course, he’s always had a big serve, big forehand,” said Nakashima, who’s now 0-6 against Shelton on tour. “His physicality out there is one of the best in the world — how fast he is and how quick he is around the court — and I think he’s definitely adding more variety to his game. Whether he’s mixing in different speeds of serve or trying to come forward as well, he’s overall a pretty complete player, especially at that young age. So, it’s great to see.”

It's crucial to see if Shelton’s going to soon become a major champion.

For as close as he’s come to realizing that lifelong dream, he was still a straight-sets out to Djokovic in the semifinals of the 2023 U.S. Open and a straight-sets out to Sinner in the semifinal of the 2025 Australian Open.

But the way Shelton is playing on hard courts in 2026 — he’s 16-4 on the surface — sets him up for success in Cincinnati next week and could make the difference for him at the next Grand Slam in Flushing Meadows come September.

“For me, this week was a massive stepping stone. I would say even more than what I did in Toronto last year, with the way that I did it,” said Shelton. “I thought I was much more clinical, more focused. I was an elite returner at times, but the way that I was able to break serve and the fashion with which I did it, my ability to play defence and offence, I’m excited with the way that I’m progressing throughout this season on the hard courts. I’ve felt that each tournament I’ve gotten better and better, and obviously we’re still early in this U.S. Open swing and I have a lot of hard-court tennis through the rest of the year, so I’m just really looking forward to see what kind of damage I can do moving forward.”

He did lots of it in Montreal, and building on it will only give him a better chance to start turning the tables on the game’s best players.

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