Ben Shelton acknowledges umpire’s bad call in Swiss Indoors 1R win over Tomas Martin Etcheverry: "I'm sorry, I feel bad"
Ben Shelton had a successful start to his campaign at the 2024 Swiss Indoors, but his win was controversial. The American was playing Tomas Martin Etcheverry and was leading the first game when a bad call by the umpire caused an uproar.
Sixth-seeded Shelton was the favorite to claim the win in this match, but the match proved to be a close-fought affair. In the sixth game of the first set, Etcheverry was behind 2-3, 15-30 on serve, when the fateful call took place.
As the Argentinian served, Shelton's return landed outside the baseline and proceeded to make contact with Etcheverry’s leg. However, the umpire ruled that the ball touched Etcheverry directly, giving the point to his opponent.
From there, Ben Shelton went on to win the match 6-3, 6-4 but took a moment to acknowledge the controversy after his win. Speaking in an on-court interview, the 22-year-old said that it was a tough moment and that he would be watching a replay after the match himself to see what happened.
“Yeah, that's a tough moment and a bad call. If it hit the ground, I'm going to watch it after the match, not going to take your word for it, but I'll go watch it for myself and see what happened.”
“I went to my team, who was kind of on that line, and I said ‘did you see what happened’? They said it looked like it hit his foot in the air. If they would have said it looked like it hit the ground I would've given him the point immediately, but not my place and I couldn't see the ball at all, obviously I was 20 feet behind my own baseline.”
Shelton went on to emphasize that moments like these proved the necessity of new technology in tennis while saying he felt bad for Etcheverry.
“I think (this is) another reason we need the VAR or whatever, I don't know what it stands for, but the replay, that has to become a part of tennis. Because it is a game of millimeters and things like that can change the course of the match. So, I'm sorry, I feel bad for Tomas on that one and it's something that just shouldn't happen.”
Ben Shelton at the 2024 Swiss Indoors
After his controversial win at the Swiss Indoors, Ben Shelton will now move on to the round of 16, where he will either face Adrian Mannarino or Stan Wawrinka. A win against the Frenchmen or the Swiss will most likely result in a quarterfinal clash against first seed Andrey Rublev.
Ben Shelton is also competing in doubles in Basel, partnering with Arthur Fils. The duo had a winning start to their campaign as they dominated Tallon Griekspoor and Pedro Martinez 6-3, 6-2. They will now face either Monaco’s Hugo Nys/Jan Zieliński or Switzerland’s Dominic Stephan Stricker/Marc-Andrea Hüsler.