As Ben has said numerous times this summer. At the end of the season he will sit down with his family and decide what is best for him moving forward. My feeling is Ben will be back at Florida working towards his finance degree come fall. He is a team guy who loves the collegiate atmosphere at the University of Florida. He is also 19 years old and has everything he needs to move his game to the next level while making the Ring Tennis Center in Gainesville his home base. Most likely he will play only professional events and maybe one or two of the big collegiate tournaments during the fall. In January he will be Florida's number one player for the spring dual match season. He has alot going for him at UF and he will obviously be in line for an NIL deal as a local Gainesville young man who is currently the best collegiate tennis player in the nation.
I am quite aware of Isner's entire career at Georgia as well as a few incidents after he graduated from Georgia and turned pro. John Isner matriculated to Georgia from Page High School in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was recruited by us at Florida but decided to sign with Georgia. I wanted him to become a Florida Gator in the worst way back in the summer of 2003, but much to my chagrin he choose Georgia. I was on the court when Hamid Mirzadeh beat Isner 7-5, 6-3 in the spring of 2005 during the regular season. That win propelled the Gators to a SEC title that spring. Isner evened the score by defeating Hamid "the hammer" during the SEC tournament later in the season. Isner played number two his freshman year, and then moved up to number one the next three seasons. He was gangly and had not grown into his body early in his Georgia career, but his progress was dramatic each season after that. So yes I am quite aware of Isner's background, and I can also say that John was one of the nicest players I ever met. However, he learned while at Georgia how to "hate" Florida. One additional tidbbit involving Isner and myself occurred in the spring of 2010. Both Florida and Georgia were undefeated in the SEC. The matchup that year was in Gainesville. I got wind of a statement Isner made on multi media. John stated that he was coming down to the worst city in the SEC, Gainesville to witness the match that day between the Gators and Georgia. We won five of six singles matches that afternoon and I saw John Isner heading for the exits of the Ring Tennis Center. I headed him off and asked him how he enjoyed his day in the most beautiful city in the SEC. The look on his face was priceless. I sure wish John Isner had matriculated at UF, but that was not to be so we made sure he experienced a few of his worst losses during his collegiate career against the Orange and Blue.
Me and my father met John at the Ring Center. It might have been that same Georgia match. He was very cordial because we were kidding with him about being a damn dog.
John always handled things like that in a good manner. He will always bea Bulldog but he will also always remain a classy gentleman. There were a lot of other things about John that never came to light during his four years at Georgia, and all of them were about making his team better.
Ben won his 1st round match against #231 Ramkumar Ramanathan 6-2, 7-5. The Atlanta Open is an ATP 250 event, which is a step up from the Challenger tournaments (ATP 250, ATP 500, ATP Masters 1000 and at the top, Grand Slams), so this is great for Shelton. He has climbed up to #254 in the latest ATP rankings.
Ben just lost an epic first round US Open match to a qualifier (who went to Miss State but has a few years on the circuit). 7-6(6) 3-6 7-6(5) 6-7(8) 6-3. Winnable match that hopefully he will learn from.
