There’s no exact thing as “home court advantage” in professional tennis. Sure, you can play a tournament in your home country, even in your home city, but how well that helps you is an open-ended question. The ATP is a global tour, featuring players who travel for three quarters of the year—and who, in most cases, have been doing so for several years, if not a decade. They become global citizens, claiming home domains in ways more symbolic than practical. There are clear cases of real advantage, though: like when Arthur Fery, a 24-year-old wildcard, made it to the semifinals of this year’s Wimbledon. If you caught any of his matches, you couldn’t miss the broadcast reminders that he lived within walking distance of the grass courts.
Another undeniable example is the case of Frances Tiafoe in New York City. After winning a stunning five-set match against fellow American Alex Michelsen, Tiafoe is heading to his third US Open semifinal in five years; he’s never been past the quarterfinals in any other Grand Slam. It wasn’t easy: Michelsen’s steady thunder had Tiafoe down two sets, and in an 0-3 deficit in the third. Tiafoe’s typical charisma, and the energy it gives the crowd—which then feeds Frances’ game further—was muted as a quietly lopsided hitting clinic took place instead. But as Michelsen’s nerves emerged, Tiafoe’s confidence rose, and he rediscovered the comfort he’s always had on the hard blue courts in Queens, surging to a 5-7, 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, 7-6 (10-6) win that took four hours and thirty-eight minutes to complete.
The end of the match provided one of the great moments of sports humanity of the year. After briefly beginning his celebration, Tiafoe reversed course, and ran to Michelsen for an embrace. His opponent is six years his junior, and something like a little brother to him on the tour. Their hug quickly became a release valve for the marathon of controlled emotion that both had just participated in, with Tiafoe pausing his joy to let his friend sob on his shoulder for a while. Michelsen exited the court with a towel over his face as he walked through the tunnel to the locker room, and will have a lot to think about after squandering a big lead during the best run of his young career.
If Michelsen wants to see how positively a player’s arc can shape after disappointment, Tiafoe would be a fine place to start looking. “Big Foe”—a nickname that the 28-year-old wears as a giant necklace charm when he plays—first got this far in 2022, and could’ve won the tournament that year, had he not crashed into the meteor that was a rising Carlos Alcaraz. Alcaraz beat Tiafoe in five sets before taking down Casper Ruud in the final, to complete his first of seven grand slam titles at the ripe age of 19. When Tiafoe made it back to the semifinals in 2024, it was his fitness that did him in: by the end of his five-setter against countrymate Taylor Fritz, he had nothing but droplets left in his fuel tank, and dropped the final frame 1-6.
That wasn’t an issue this week, with Tiafoe outlasting Michelsen physically, mentally and emotionally. He’s dedicated himself to a higher level of endurance. After losing early in New York last year, Foe remade his coaching staff, and began a viral 150-day toughness regiment that appears to have paid major dividends. Tiafoe has had a strong year overall, but began really turning heads a few weeks ago in Cincinnati, where he powered his way to the final match, manhandling No. 2 seed Felix Auger-Aliassime 6-3, 6-4 in the process. Now, he’s back to being a soaring fan favorite at Flushing Meadows, with a particular fondness for Louis Armstrong Stadium, where he’s won 10 matches over his career, and lost none.
His repowered showmanship—articulated by his quick-wrist ease and great feel for fireworks up at the net—has once again given him cache with the rowdy Queens crowds, hungry for pizzazz, that few others possess. Among those who do? Ben Shelton, who in something of a shock beat Alcaraz in his own quarterfinal to meet Tiafoe in Friday’s semifinal. Like Foe, Big Ben survived a mind-warpingly epic match, his ending around 3:30 AM local time—the latest the US Open has ever ran. Even against a diminished Alcaraz, who just came back from four months off with a wrist injury, Shelton’s win is the peak of the 23-year-old’s career; who else could make even an 80% version of tennis’s best man look so bedraggled? Shelton’s feat is already massive, and his ability to return to emotional neutral before facing Tiafoe is certainly a major variable.
It has been since his five-set loss to Alcaraz in 2022, in these very same semifinals, that Tiafoe has faced anyone who could truly battle his control of the American crowd. Like Tiafoe, Shelton’s greatest successes have all come in New York, with his last semifinal appearance coming in 2023 (when Novak Djokovic hung up the phone on him). The people paying premium dollar to see the two national tennis studs face off will, like the ball, move their energy back and forth between the players, depending on who’s earning it at any given moment. If you want to see the best American men’s tennis showdown of this century, you’ll need to take a chance on this one to make sure you were there for it.
