Injured Sinner dispatches Shelton for semi-final slot

When dusk fell over SW19 on Tuesday, a very real question was whether Jannik Sinner’s elbow would break his heart.

- ALEX PATTLE

The world No 1, still recovering from the emotional annihilation of his French Open final defeat by Carlos Alcaraz, was tasked with recovering from injury in time for his Wimbledon quarterfinal with Ben Shelton. And when Sinner had a shortened practice on Tuesday, one day after falling and hurting his elbow in his lucky escape against an injured Grigor Dimitrov, everyone wondered whether the Italian would play at all yesterday.

Boy, did he play. Shelton must surely have wondered whether Sinner was ever injured at all. He won in straight sets 7-6(2), 6-4, 6-4 and will now face Novak Djokovic in the semifinal. The Italian’s coach, Darren Cahill, said on Tuesday that Sinner had lost 6mph on his forehand courtesy of the afflicted elbow; where did those 6mph go, Darren? They seemed present and accounted for on No 1 Court, where Sinner looked like a man in complete control of his arsenal - forehand, backhand, and serve.

In fact, if ever there was going to be a test of the sinews in Sinner’s sore elbow, it would be the serve of Shelton. Yet Sinner coped and even managed to make his own serve the weapon of the day. In the first set, 22-year-old Shelton was barely able to put a dent in the 23-year-old’s service games, winning shockingly few points.