PARIS (AP) — Carlos Alcaraz conjured up what initially appeared — to the chair umpire, to everyone watching in the stands or on TV and to his opponent, Ben Shelton — a remarkable lunging volley to win a point at the French Open on Sunday.
But Alcaraz knew it shouldn't count. So after briefly thinking about it, the defending champion at Roland-Garros fessed up and called himself for breaking the rules, handing the point to Shelton during what would become a 7-6 (8), 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 victory for Alcaraz in the fourth round.
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Spain's Carlos Alcaraz returns the ball to Ben Shelton of the U.S. during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Ben Shelton of the U.S. returns the ball to Spain's Carlos Alcaraz during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz returns the ball to Ben Shelton of the U.S. during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Ben Shelton of the U.S. sits during a break as he plays Spain's Carlos Alcaraz during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Ben Shelton of the U.S. returns the ball to Spain's Carlos Alcaraz during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz returns the ball to Ben Shelton of the U.S. during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
“It's a shame, because it was the ‘Hot Shot’ of the day,” Alcaraz said later with a smile.
“Crazy shot,” Shelton said.
Here's what happened: Early in the second set, Shelton whipped a passing shot well out of Alcaraz's reach up at the net. So Alcaraz flung his racket — and, as his equipment flipped through the air, its strings somehow not only made contact with the ball but sent it back over the net and onto the other side of the court.
Initially, the second-seeded Alcaraz was awarded the point. But he went over to the chair umpire to admit that he wasn't holding his racket when it touched the ball. That's not allowed, so he conceded the point to Shelton, an American seeded 13th.
When the official informed the Court Philippe-Chatrier crowd what had happened, Alcaraz was given a round of applause.
"I thought, ’OK, I could not say anything.' But I would have felt guilty if I didn’t say anything," Alcaraz explained. “It’s just about if I know that I didn’t (do), or I did, a wrong thing. ... I have to say. I have to be honest with myself. I have to be honest with Ben, with everyone. ... It's just about the respect we have against each other, and I think that sports, in general, should be like this.”
It came at what could have been a critical moment, because instead of leading 40-30 on his serve, Alcaraz was now down 30-40, giving Shelton his first break point of the match. But Alcaraz saved that one — and five others in that 20-point game — along the way to taking a two-set lead in an entertaining matchup between a pair of 22-year-olds who hit the ball hard.
“I thought it was clean, you know? I thought he hit the volley, and (then) the racket flew out of his hand,” Shelton said. “I was kind of surprised that he was, like, ‘No, I let go of the racket and threw it.’ ... Obviously a guy with a lot of sportsmanship.”
Shelton, twice a semifinalist at majors, delivered serves at up to 143 mph (230 kph) and forehands at up to 116 mph (187 kph). Alcaraz, already a four-time Grand Slam champion, showed off various parts of his repertoire.
It was tighter than the score might indicate: Shelton held three opportunities to own the opening set, leading in the tiebreaker at 6-4, 6-5 and 7-6. Take any of the subsequent points, and Shelton would own that set.
But Alcaraz — who meets No. 12 Tommy Paul of the U.S. in the quarterfinals Tuesday — saved the first with a service winner. Shelton netted a backhand on the next. And the last ended with Shelton smacking a backhand right at the body of Alcaraz, who was up at the net and contorted himself in order to chop a drop volley winner.
Alcaraz then converted his second set point, closing a 15-stroke exchange with a down-the-line forehand that drew a mistake from Shelton.
The third set went to Shelton when Alcaraz put a forehand into the net, and the big-swinging American punched the air, then his chest, and screamed: “Let's go, baby! Come on!”
The fourth swung Alcaraz’s way when he used a drop shot winner to set up a break point that he claimed for a 2-1 edge and, after a total of 3 hours, 19 minutes, he was able to finish off an 11th consecutive win at Roland-Garros.
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz returns the ball to Ben Shelton of the U.S. during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Ben Shelton of the U.S. returns the ball to Spain's Carlos Alcaraz during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz returns the ball to Ben Shelton of the U.S. during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Ben Shelton of the U.S. sits during a break as he plays Spain's Carlos Alcaraz during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Ben Shelton of the U.S. returns the ball to Spain's Carlos Alcaraz during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz returns the ball to Ben Shelton of the U.S. during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Sunday, June 1 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
