Jayne Kamin-Oncea - Imagn Images
Ben Shelton is at the forefront of a USA men’s tennis resurgence in recent years. After essentially an entire decade in the wilderness, Shelton and his fellow countrymen are leading American men back to prominence.
Shelton isn’t your traditional tennis superstar, though. The son of a former SEC tennis coach grew up playing a bunch of other sports, and showed off his football skills recently in a viral social media clip.
Shelton grew up playing football and basketball, along with tennis. He was actually a pretty highly-touted quarterback as a youngster, and at 6-foot-4, 195lb, he has protoypical size for the position when you consider that he keeps his weight low due to the cardio-centric nature of tennis. But, he could’ve easily put the weight on to be protoypical size.
Ultimately, his dad, a former ATP top-100 player and head coach at the University of Florida, won out and he focused on tennis. That’s turned out to be a good choice, as the big hitter has already made the semifinals at both the US Open, and, recently, at the Australian Open.
But, when you see clips like this, you wonder what could’ve been had Ben Shelton stuck with football.
@bleacherreport Ben Shelton SLINGING the rock 🏈 (via @Tennis Paradise) #tennis #football #tennisparadise #sports
He can hit serves upwards of 150mph, so it’s not surprising that he has a rocket arm with a football in his hand. But, it’s cool to see sports crossover like this.
Shelton should be poised for a big summer, especially at Wimbledon and at the US Open and American swing late this summer. He’s getting set to play in the prestigious Indian Wells tournament in Southern California later this week into next week.