{"id":81233,"date":"2025-07-21T18:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/81233\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T18:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:05:10","slug":"frances-tiafoe-says-how-his-relationship-with-ben-shelton-has-changed-ahead-of-playing-doubles-together-in-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/81233\/","title":{"rendered":"Frances Tiafoe says how his relationship with Ben Shelton has changed ahead of playing doubles together in Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton are set to team up at the Washington Open this week, and the pair could not be happier about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tiafoe and Shelton<\/a>, both ranked within the top 15 singles players on the ATP Tour, make up just part of the star-studded field competing at the Washington Open.<\/p>\n

While the singles draws usually grab the headlines at these high-profile competitions, this year\u2019s Washington tournament boasts some exciting names in the doubles draw, including Emma Raducanu, Nick Kyrgios and Gael Monfils<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ahead of their first round match against Olympic Gold Medallists Matthew Ebden and John Peers, Tiafoe and Shelton have discussed their friendship and what they hope to get out of the competition.<\/p>\n

\"BenPhoto by Clive Brunskill\/Getty Images for Laver CupFrances Tiafoe says he and Ben Shelton have become \u2018incredibly close\u2019<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters before his first matches in Washington, Tiafoe said: \u201cI love Ben man.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had incredible battles and became incredibly close the last few years. Our humour, our mannerisms are very much the same and the crowd is going to go nuts\u2026 we practised just now and we couldn\u2019t even get out the court. <\/p>\n

The crowd is going to go absolutely nuts. I\u2019m super excited to get out there with him and we\u2019re going to go for it, we\u2019re going to try pretty hard, try to win some matches out here, both singles and doubles.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s going to be fun, it\u2019s going to be really fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tiafoe has received a bye to the second round of the singles, where he will face either compatriot Aleksandar Kovacevic or Quentin Halys.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Shelton has also received a bye to the second round, and will face either wild card Mackenzie McDonald or qualifier Colton Smith in the second round.<\/p>\n

Ben Shelton says he \u2018loves\u2019 playing doubles<\/p>\n

Ahead of their singles and doubles matches, Ben Shelton doubled down on the element of \u2018fun\u2019 described by Tiafoe.<\/p>\n

The pair enjoyed success at the 2024 Laver Cup. Despite Team World\u2019s loss, the Americans split their two doubles matches together, beating Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev<\/a>, before losing to Alcaraz<\/a> and Casper Ruud.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have a lot of fun. We\u2019re going to compete obviously. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we should get a good crowd here, and we thought that would be a good place to play. Hopefully get a dub [win] and play a couple matches but even if it\u2019s just one match, we\u2019ll have a lot of fun out there.<\/p>\n

\"BenPhoto by Visionhaus via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll enjoy ourselves Monday night, kind of get ourselves ready and in a good place for our singles matches.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love playing doubles. I like the extra competition and especially if I\u2019m playing with one of my boys, someone I like to be around and obviously Foe\u2019s one of my best friends on tour.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton are set to team up at the Washington Open this week, and the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":81234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4412,21485,27762,62,1464,67,132,68,52250],"class_list":{"0":"post-81233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-atp-tennis-players","9":"tag-ben-shelton","10":"tag-frances-tiafoe","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-washington-open"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114892552648235427","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}