Ben Shelton is tough, but the weight of history was too big a burden

The fridge didn’t stand a chance. Alexander Karelin, the Russian Olympic wrestler, just hugged the appliance, heaved it up and carried it up eight floors to his flat. No lift, you understand. But 130kg wrestlers we’re used to being massive, tennis players less so. John McEnroe once mocked the careful calorie counting of his peers by famously insisting he was on “a Haagen Dazs” diet.

But Ben Shelton is different, for he owns the physique of a decathlete and probably bench presses washing machines in his spare time. He’s an impressive specimen and yet what he was being asked to carry in the US Open final had a vast and unknown weight: History.