"Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome."—Arthur Ashe
The stadium that bears the name of the great Arthur Ashe, 1968 US Open singles champion and social justice activist, will be the home to a historic match on Tuesday evening: either Frances Tiafoe will reach his second consecutive US Open semifinal, or his fellow American Ben Shelton, 20, will reset the high-water mark of his nascent pro tennis career and reach the last four of a Grand Slam for the first time.
Or to be slightly more succinct: It’s an all-Black, all-American blockbuster in the sport of tennis, broadcast in homes in almost all corners of the globe (and in prime-time in the U.S.) and taking place inside a stadium named after a civil rights icon.
The doing—Tiafoe and Shelton each winning four matches in a seven-day span to set up the historic encounter—should end up being more important than the outcome of the match in a number of aspects.
"It's going to be a great atmosphere ... great representation for people of color, right? Two people of color playing in the quarterfinals, [a] huge match in Arthur Ashe," Tiafoe said after his Round 4 victory. "It's a pretty monumental moment."
A paradigm shift may be a better descriptor.
Long regarded as white-bread, inaccessible and unwelcoming to minorities, tennis could be on the cusp of a seminal moment, especially if Tiafoe and Shelton put on a show under the lights that have people talking for years to come, a la the Sampras-Agassi four-tiebreak-set thriller of 2001. But instead of Pistol Pete and Andre, the images indelibly etched in the minds of young spectators—and in particular, young people of color, who may turn into the next crop of American tennis royalty—will be of players possessing a darker complexion.
There is no shortage of ways that Tiafoe versus Shelton, in this round and on this stage, could change the course of the perception and the look of tennis, and here are a few of those potential effects.
Heightened Awareness of Black Tennis Pioneers
Bob Ryland. The American Tennis Association. Lori McNeil vs. Zina Garrison. Benjamin Woods.
There are parallels to be drawn between Tiafoe vs. Shelton and the most recent Super Bowl, where two Black starting quarterbacks were in the Super Bowl for the first time (Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts). That led to a number of profiles produced about the history of Black quarterbacks in the National Football League, and the long struggle many of them endured, including Super Bowl XXII MVP Doug Williams (first Black quarterback to start a Super Bowl game), to debunk racial stereotypes associated with playing the position.
An ideal platform is all set up for media outlets and historians to highlight a number of pioneering, yet lesser-known, Black tennis icons whose impact on the sport is on a par with Ashe and Althea Gibson, and who similarly paved the way for future generations of Black people involving themselves in the sport.
Trail blazers such as Ryland, who broke the color barrier in tennis when he competed in the Jack Marsh’s World Pro Championships in Cleveland to become the first African-American male tennis pro, in 1959. Four decades prior, a group of Black businessmen, college professors and physicians responded to segregation at tennis clubs and tournaments by founding the American Tennis Association (ATA) in Largo, Md.—20 minutes from Tiafoe’s hometown of College Park, Md.—in 1916, and it remains the oldest African-American sports organization in the United States.
Another 70 years passed from that seminal moment to when two Black players would first play against each other at a major professional tennis championship, when Lori McNeil defeated Zina Garrison at the Eckerd Open final in 1986, held in Largo, Fla. In 1990, Garrison became the first woman since Gibson in 1958 to play for a Grand Slam title when she made a magical run to the Wimbledon final, defeating Monica Seles and Stefanie Graf en route to the championship match. By the start of the next decade, Black players squaring off against each other on the tennis court became a regular occurrence with the emergence and dominance of the Williams sisters.
By the end of the 1990s, Black tennis players squaring off against each other on the tennis court became a regular occurrence with the emergence, and dominance, of the Williams sisters, who won a combined 62 Grand Slam titles and eight gold medals across all disciplines. Their success was soon followed by the next generation of Black women who made an impact on the sport’s biggest stage, from 2017 US Open champion Sloane Stephens, to the woman Stephens defeated in that final, Madison Keys; to 2022 US Open women’s doubles finalist Taylor Townsend, to 19-year-old sensation Coco Gauff, a 2021 US Open women’s doubles finalist who clinched a spot in the semifinals of singles in Flushing Meadows for the first time on Tuesday.
Benjamin Woods also proved that Black tennis magic wasn’t just limited to holding a racquet. One of Ashe’s former hitting partners at West Point, Woods became one of the premier photojournalists in the sport while shooting for "Black Tennis Magazine," covering more than 100 Grand Slam tournaments. (Woods passed away one month ago today, on Aug. 5, 2023, at the age of 87.)
The Age of Social Media
Shelton and Tiafoe both have electric games that are simply must-see-TV: Tiafoe can crack booming winners on the forehand wing from any position on the court, while Shelton has one of the fastest serves in the history of the game, evidenced by the couple of 149-mph bombs unleashed during a service game in his fourth-round victory against Tommy Paul.
They combine those eye-catching groundstrokes with ebullient on-court demeanors, perfect for the ever-growing influence social media has on sports fans, opting to swipe through online posts and consume 30-second highlight-worthy clips that generate thousands of hits and as many hot takes.
“I do think this [match] can attract newer fans with the social media presence of the younger generation,” said James Blake, current ESPN commentator and two-time US Open quarterfinalist who also was the third Black man to compete for the U.S. in the Davis Cup.
“I am from a different era, but see how effective [Instagram] Reels and TikTok and those types of short-content moments can be. I think both of these guys have such engaging personalities that there will be quite a few moments before, during and after the match that can be captured to bring in new fans of the game and of the individuals.”
Tiafoe has already embraced the crossover star-power potential that’s crucial in drawing young minorities to the game of tennis, from the basketball-inspired tank top look on the court to having celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Anna Wintour and Jimmy Butler either come to his matches or invite him up to their suites to meet afterward.
Anyone not familiar with Tiafoe before his run in last year’s US Open became so when none other than LeBron James tweeted his congratulations to his 52.7 million followers after "Big Foe" eliminated Rafael Nadal in the fourth round.
Shelton, who also sports the basketball-tank look in showing off his chiseled arms, already has had a viral moment this fortnight, with "149 mph" popping up on feeds.
Before Instagram and TikTok were ever a thing, Ashe used media to go viral by recording an album—a tennis tutorial sold as an LP in 1974 called "Learn Tennis with Arthur Ashe"—that introduced many people of different backgrounds and skill levels to the sport, allowing people to play tennis anywhere they had enough space to do so.
Reflecting Ever-Changing Demographics
The long-standing belief that people are more likely to pursue a profession if they see someone excel in it who looks just like them certainly applies to the tennis court, and tonight’s contest is sure to draw a diverse audience—both in the stands and those who will watch the broadcast—attracted to both the powerful, elegant tennis and the backgrounds each comes from.
Shelton, born to a Black father (Bryan, his current coach, who spent time coaching Ben as the head tennis coach at the University of Florida) and a white mother, is representative of a country that has exponentially grown more diverse. According to a 2021 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of non-Hispanic Americans who identify as multiracial jumped from 6 million to 13.5 million, with those who reported their race as both white and Black making up for 20.5% of that new number. (Changes to the U.S. Census Bureau in how to capture as many aspects of a person’s race had an effect on the rise in numbers.)
Tiafoe’s parents were born in the West African country of Sierra Leone, and his dad, Constant—known as Frances, Sr.—fled the country as it plunged into a civil war in the early 1990s. Tiafoe’s mom, Alphina, joined the family in the United States three years later. While Tiafoe’s mom worked as a nurse, his dad worked on building the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., where the young Tiafoe got his start in the game of tennis while his dad remained as the maintenance manager.
The story of Tiafoe’s family has garnered national attention in the past, given his prior runs deep into Grand Slams, and it still resonates with every telling. According to a 2019 Census Bureau, over a quarter of children under 18 in the United States lived with at least one foreign-born parent.
“One of the USTA’s priorities over the years is to make tennis look like America,” Martin Blackman, the USTA general manager of player development and former ATP professional, told USOpen.org. “Even though we’re making great strides on that effort, it’s still a relatively expensive sport. We’ve got to keep pushing to make it more accessible. We have to keep pushing to make it more compelling for kids and families of color. So when you see Ben and Frances at this level on this stage, it shows that it’s a game for everybody, especially for Black communities.”
Many of those children may end up being the first members of their families to attend college, and the University of Florida Gator-head logo emblazoned on the T-shirts shirts sported by some in Shelton’s support group allows those who observe him from afar to believe that playing the sport is also an avenue available to access higher education.
“Now in the last five, six years, the proof-of-concept is that you can go to college, you can get better, you can mature physically, emotionally,” Blackman said. “You can also walk away with the promise of being able to come back and get your degree.”
America the Beautiful
African American history is American history, and one is guaranteed to stay on course as the tournament hasn’t seen a men’s singles champion hail from the United States in two decades, back when Andy Roddick won the title. It would have been difficult to imagine at that time that the next American following in Roddick’s footsteps would look like someone who resembles Tiafoe or Shelton, but those two (along with Chris Eubanks, another Black tennis star who made the Wimbledon quarterfinals earlier this summer) have become some of the world’s elite tennis players, and have the chance to change perceptions that the sport is not just for the elites of society.
"It’s a really cool opportunity for American tennis," Shelton said. "This is what you guys always talk to us about: Who’s going to be the next Grand Slam champion? Who’s going to do it? I always have the same reply: American tennis is going in a great direction. It’s pretty cool to know at least one American is going to be in the semifinals."
Tiafoe agrees, and added: "The bigger picture... I think tennis is going to win."
