Do we like them?

Do we like Ben Shelton?

Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a decent one on kindness, but the record we could verify is thin on his views, so we stop short of the top.

Ben Shelton is one of the big American names in men's tennis. In 2026 he won the Dallas Open in February, beating Taylor Fritz in the final, and made it all the way to the US Open final in September. That is a proper run for a bloke still young in tennis years.

The harm check came back quiet. We searched for anything he has said or done about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, the climate or public health, and nothing harmful came up. We also found no sign that he's sliding into conspiracy theories or grievance, and no repeated work with anyone who pushes harm.

The nearest thing to a political flap was in January 2026, when he signed a camera lens with “USA 'till it's backwards” after a win in Melbourne. Some read it as political. He said on Instagram there was “no underlying message” and that it was a shoutout to young Americans doing well in Australia. Take him at his word: we found nothing else to suggest otherwise.

He's not shy about a stoush, though. At the 2025 Australian Open he said players had been treated badly by broadcasters and took aim at an on-court interviewer. He also asked whether a comment about a veteran opponent being his dad was “a Black joke”. Fair or not, that's a bloke standing up for his peers, and the interviewer's reply was that he wasn't sure.

The real good stuff is there too. He came second in the ATP's 2023 Carbon Tracker for offsetting tournament travel, which earned a $30,000 donation, and he sent it to High Impact Athletes' climate fund. After losing the US Open final he visited kids at a New York hospital the next day and donated match shoes to a charity auction. That's the kind of thing you do when no one's making you.

So it's a yes from us. The honest caveat is that we found little about what he thinks on the big issues, so the score reflects a clean record and some good deeds, not a long public track record of standing up for others. Watch this space, but there's nothing here to be nervous about.