Ben Shelton is one of the most exciting young tennis players on the planet.
And the 22-year old lefty American credits one of his best skills on the court to his childhood years as a quarterback.
Shelton has one of the biggest serves on tour, and when asked about his football experience after his Wimbledon Round of 16 win on Monday, he tied the two together.
He was asked how playing “quarterbacker” has contributed to his tennis career.
“I’m not sure many people in the crowd know what that is,” Shelton said of football. “They use that brown, oval shaped ball, sometimes they kick it between the uprights. But no, yeah, I grew up playing quarterback or a quarterbacker, either way. And probably the only thing that’s a great correlation with tennis is the serve, as you guys can probably see. And so, yeah, that’s kind of the one thing that I took from football onto the tennis court.
“Obviously, I’ve always loved athletics, playing a team sport, something bigger than yourself. Now I’m obviously playing an individual sport, but I still have a team supporting me that I work with every day. So that’s the most important thing to me, I don’t want to be out here by myself, I want to be doing it with people that I love and I got a lot of people that I love over there.”
Shelton seemingly transitioned to a focus on tennis by the time he got to high school.
He once told the New York Times of football: “Going into the end of middle school, there were a lot of huge kids in football, and I hadn’t really hit my growth spurt yet. I was maybe a little tired of getting bashed up all the time.”
Seems like Shelton made the right decision.
MORE: Read more about Ben Shelton’s relationship with soccer star Trinity Rodman
