Shelton returns to Live Top 20 with opening Basel win
pBig-serving left-hander Ben Shelton pushed back inside the Top 20 of the PIF ATP Live Rankings with a commanding 6-3, 6-4 win over Tomas Martin Etcheverry in the first round of the Swiss Indoors Basel Tuesday./ppClimbing three places to No. 20, the former University of Florida standout joins countrymen No. 6 Taylor Fritz, No. 12 Tommy Paul and No. 15 Frances Tiafoe in the elite club./p[ATP APP]pCompeting for the first time since a competitive defeat to World No. 1 Jannik Sinner in the fourth round of the Rolex Shanghai Masters, Shelton dropped just six points on his first serve and saved the lone break point he faced according to Infosys ATP Stats./ppThe 22-year-old improved to 38-23 on the year as he attempts to reach a season milestone of 40 wins for the first time in his career./pp"I went into the match with a lot of confidence because of the way I have been playing,rdquo; Shelton said. ldquo;This is the type of surface I'm really comfortable on and my game is coming together really well. Two more tournaments this year and I'm pushing strong to the end./pp"I came out and executed a good game plan."/pp/pdiv style="position: relative; display: block; max-width: 100%;" div style="padding-top: 56.25%;" iframe src="https://players.brightcove.net/6057277721001/8gZSNwgH_default/index.html?videoId=6363603406112" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%;"/iframe /div/divpFourth seed Holger Rune kept alive his faint hopes of returning to the Nitto ATP Finals after defeating Chilean Nicolas Jarry 6-4, 7-6(3) in their first Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting./ppChasing his first title of the year, the 2022 Basel finalist is 15th in the PIF ATP Live Race to Turin, 1,145 points behind eighth-placed Andrey Rublev. /ppThe 21-year-old Dane, who seeks to reach the Basel semi-finals (or better) for the third straight year, dropped just four points on his first serve and did not face a break point./ppSwiss wild card Dominic Stricker defeated Dutchman Tallon Griekspoor 6-4, 6-4 after firing 14 aces and winning 31 of 35 first-serve points en route to just his fourth tour-level victory of the season./ppnbsp;/ppnbsp;/p[NEWSLETTER FORM]