After a hectic media day out in Flushing, Queens, at the US Open, Ben Shelton , the 22-year-old seeded sixth in the tournament, pulls up outside of New York City’s Polo Bar around 9 p.m., tall, commanding, and dressed in a tangle of silver necklaces and a vintage Olympics-themed bomber. Maybe three seconds after he’s exited his Escalade, a man walking by shouts, “Ben! No way.” Shelton claps hands with the passerby, who tells the tennis player to “give ’em hell!”—rather instant proof that Shelton is quickly becoming one of the sport’s biggest stars, both widely recognized and amiable enough to handle the attention easily.

That star power has gotten brighter in just the past few weeks, as Shelton clinched the most important title of his career: the Canadian Open in Toronto, a Masters 1000

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