Ben Shelton can win his first major and end a lengthy American drought vs Zverev in US Open final

NEW YORK (AP) — Ben Shelton is playing for his first Grand Slam title, though he knows this U.S. Open final is about more than what it means to him.

When he faces No. 1 seed Alexander Zverev on Sunday, Shelton will be trying to become the first U.S. man to win a major title since Andy Roddick in 2003. He can become the first American Black man to win his country's biggest tournament since Arthur Ashe in 1968.

That's a lot for a 23-year-old to consider — on top of the fact that he's facing a player he's never beaten. Yet the No. 8-seeded Shelton said he can handle all of it.

“For me, this whole tournament now at this point has been unchartered territory. I’m in positions I’ve never been in before. I’ve beaten a guy or guys that I have never beaten before. I’m just excited to put it all out on the line,” Shelton said.

“Yes, I can think about how cool this moment is and what I’m playing for. At the end of the day, I’m here in New York, I’m hanging out with my team, I’m with my homies playing a little bit of tennis and I’ve been able to downplay the moment pretty well.”

Shelton already made some history during his first run to a major final, outlasting defending champion Carlos Alcaraz in a quarterfinal matchup that ended at 3:33 a.m., the latest finish in U.S. Open history. Then it was a semifinal victory over Frances Tiafoe, when the winner would become the latest American hope to end the men's drought.

Shelton was born in October 2002, nine months before Roger Federer won his first major title at Wimbledon. Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic would soon join him in dominating the Grand Slam tournaments, so it was rare when an American man even had a realistic chance to win one during the ensuing 23 years.

Now Shelton is in the position Zverev was six years ago, trying to win his first Grand Slam title in New York. The German was on the verge of doing it before a collapse, becoming the first man to lose the U.S. Open after winning the first two sets in the final since 1949. He lost to Dominic Thiem in a fifth-set tiebreaker.

“I’ve played a lot of big matches since then,” Zverev said. “Back then, of course, it was my first Grand Slam final. I was inexperienced. I was still a young guy, I would say. Yeah, just different. Everything is different.”

Now, he's been the dominant player in Grand Slams in a season that has seen injuries to Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. Zverev finally broke through to win his first major at the French Open, then got to the Wimbledon final and lost to Sinner. He is 24-2 in Grand Slam matches in 2026.

The 2020 final was played in an almost entirely empty stadium, with no fans allowed during the coronavirus pandemic. Ashe will be packed Sunday and the crowd will be decidedly on Shelton's side.

Zverev said he welcomes the change.

“I played a lot of French guys in France. I think the most hostile crowd, if you call it that, is when you are playing a French in Paris Bercy back in the day,” he said. “There was quite intense, and I always enjoyed those. I always enjoyed those kind of atmospheres.”

Zverev is 5-0 against Shelton and has won 10 of their 11 sets. They haven't met this year.

Shelton had a dominant serve from the moment he arrived on tour, and being able to unleash it at speeds above 140 mph gives the left-hander a weapon he can rely on. His ability to defend and triumph in longer rallies makes him a different player now.

“I think Ben has been trending in the right direction throughout this year. I think four titles on different surfaces kind of is evidence of it,” said Bryan Shelton, his father and coach. “I think part of the reason is that he’s become more mature and more disciplined on the court. He’s willing to suffer a little bit in the rallies and go deeper and really use his athleticism.”

Ben Shelton met up after his victory Friday with Jalen Brunson, the NBA Finals MVP who led the New York Knicks to the title, their first championship since 1973. Brunson told Shelton he'll be back to watch the final.

Perhaps he will see the end of another lengthy drought.

“I’m looking forward to the challenge, being able to problem-solve on Sunday,” Shelton said. “I know what I’m up against, and I’m also the most confident I’ve ever been in my game.”

See AP’s full tennis coverage here

New York Knicks' Jalen Brunson attends a match between Ben Shelton, of the United States, and Frances Tiafoe, of the United States, during the men's singles semifinals of the U.S. Open tennis championships Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Alexander Zverev, of Germany, returns the ball to Karen Khachanov, of Russia, during the men's singles semifinals of the U.S. Open tennis championships Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Ben Shelton, of the United States, hits balls to audience after he won his match against Frances Tiafoe, of the United States, during the men's singles semifinals of the U.S. Open tennis championships Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Alexander Zverev, of Germany, celebrates winning a match against Karen Khachanov, of Russia, during the men's singles semifinals of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Ben Shelton, of the United States, reacts after he won his match against Frances Tiafoe, of the United States, during the men's singles semifinals of the U.S. Open tennis championships Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

NEW YORK (AP) — The CEO of Anthropic said Saturday the artificial-intelligence industry should slow its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Without it, Dario Amodei warned AI could be capable within six to 12 months of leading a swarm that could take over the entire internet, among other risks.

Amodei is one of the leading voices in AI, and he offered a plan in a post on his website to increase checks on the industry, one part of which he said Anthropic is undertaking by itself already. The others would require coordination among the broad industry and with governments around the world, including authoritarian ones.

“I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability, and we used that time to advance alignment, we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong,” Amodei said.

He got some quick encouragement from other big names in the industry. OpenAI's Sam Altman said on X that the company behind ChatGPT will commit to one of Amodei's proposals for safety and will “have more to share soon.” Elon Musk, meanwhile, said on X that “Dario is right.”

The stakes are high, even as some critics dismissed earlier warnings as ways to gin up excitement about the AI industry and its capabilities. Anthropic and OpenAI are preparing for possible debuts on the stock market that could value them at many hundreds of billions of dollars, while a big chunk of Musk's SpaceX business is involved with AI.

Anthropic said two days earlier that it blocked efforts by bad actors to use its AI models for malicious activity, such as cyberattacks, surveillance and research that could have led to biological weapons. In July, OpenAI shook the industry after saying its AI system hacked into another company on its own in an “unprecedented cyber incident.”

Amodei's post comes only a few days after one of Anthropic's researchers announced he’s resigning over concerns that Anthropic and its competitors are not acting responsibly in AI development. Another former Anthropic employee, Joe Benton, wrote in a Substack post published Friday that he left his job as part of a safety team “to hold AI companies accountable” and that humanity “may not survive this transition.”

“Many of the people I know who work on safety research at AI companies want to do what is right for the world,” Benton said in his posting. “But they feel their companies are trapped in a race to build superintelligence: either they stop and other, less conscientious people take their place; or, they continue, and risk participating in enormous harm themselves.”

Amodei said he still believes in the tremendous benefits that AI could create, such as cures for major diseases. But he said he’s grown more worried over the last few months about AI’s growing ability to improve itself and build the next generation of AI. “Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.”

He also pointed specifically to the attack in July where OpenAI's system hacked into Hugging Face. Some have called it an example of AI going “rogue,” though researchers have said that may be unnecessarily anthropomorphizing AI, which was working on a goal set by humans.

OpenAI said the hack was the result of AI going to “extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal” and that it “found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation.”

To help rein in the risks, Amodei suggested that all companies at the frontier of AI commit to giving “ongoing, employee-like access” to a team of outside evaluators, who can monitor safety practices.

He said Anthropic already plans to do so itself, including offering desks in its offices, access badges and company laptops. Having such independent, embedded evaluators is what OpenAI's Altman also quickly committed to doing.

The other parts of Amodei's suggested plan may be more difficult to implement. One asks the U.S. government to potentially issue waivers that would allow U.S. AI companies to coordinate and set safety standards without running afoul of antitrust laws.

Another asks the U.S. and other democratic governments to try to coordinate with authoritarian governments, so that companies from China and other countries don't accelerate their efforts when U.S. rivals are intentionally pacing theirs.

“The measures I propose to advance the frontier at a safe pace will not be easy,” Amodei acknowledged. “But I believe we owe it to humanity to try.”

FILE - Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)