Bad Day For American Tennis: Frances Tiafoe, Ben Shelton Drop Third Round Matches At U.S. Open

America’s quest to have a man win the U.S. Open took a massive blow on Friday.

Frances Tiafoe was ranked No. 17 in the world heading into the tournament, and he breezed into the third round to face unranked German Jan-Lennard Struff. For a guy who had aspirations of winning the tournament, things got off to a horrible start.

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Tiafoe dropped the first two sets, 3-6, 4-6, but showed a lot of character and fight in the third. However, Struff would end up winning the third set by a score of 7(9)-6(7), ending Tiafoe’s hopes of winning his first Grand Slam title.

No. 6 Ben Shelton fared much better on the court against Frenchman Adrain Mannarino, at least for four sets. The American would win two of the first three sets, but that’s when things took a turn.

In the first game of the fourth set, Shelton experienced pain in his left shoulder (the arm he holds the racket with). Mannarino would take advantage of that unfortunate turn by winning the fourth set, despite Shelton’s inspiring effort to fight through the pain.

However, he could not ignore it forever, and before the fifth set began, he medically retired from the match.

"When he started to have pain, he was leading in the match," Mannarino said in his on-court interview. "Honestly, he probably would’ve won that match. That’s unfortunate for him, and lucky for me. I don’t really know what to say right now. I’m happy to be through, but I wish him the best, of course."

No American man has won the year’s final Grand Slam since Andy Roddick took home the crown in 2003. Now the burden of changing that falls to Taylor Fritz, who has the best chance of any remaining American at winning.