Ben Shelton felt the need to correct Annabel Croft during their Wimbledon on-court interview after she claimed that he had played as a "quarterbacker" during his American football days. The BBC host was congratulating Shelton on reaching the quarter-finals for the first time in his young career.
He had sealed a 3-6 6-1 7-6(1) 7-5 victory over Italian star Lorenzo Sonego and was then asked if he is able to draw on his experience playing college American football, in tennis. As a child, Shelton played both tennis and American football, before settling on the former and competing for the University of Florida.
When asking about his time playing another sport besides tennis, Croft concluded the interview by asking: "Just finally, I was reading that in college you loved your American football and you were a quarterbacker? I hope I got that right. What are the comparisons between tennis and American football?"
With a big grin on his face, knowing that the name for the position is quarterback, Shelton replied: "I am not sure many people in the crowd know what that is, they use that brown, oval-shaped ball, sometimes they kick it between the uprights.
"I grew up playing quarterback, or quarterbacker... either way. Probably the only thing that is a direct correlation between tennis is the serve, as you guys can probably see. That's kind of the one thing that I took from football onto the tennis court."
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The crowd on Court 1 erupted into laughter as Shelton referenced Croft's 'quarterbacker' position and he struggled to contain himself in the interview, having to grab his towel and wipe his face before continuing with the remainder of his answer.
"Obviously I have always loved athletics," Shelton added. "Playing in a team sports, something bigger than yourself. Now I am obviously playing an individual sport but I have a team supporting me that I work with every day so that's the most important thing to me.
"I don't want to be out here by myself, I want to be doing it with people that I love and I have a lot of people that I love over there."
Shelton also taunted his dad, Bryan, who was a professional tennis player and reached the fourth round of Wimbledon in 1994.
Now that his son has gone one step further, Ben named his father as his inspiration to play his style of tennis on grass and said: "He was in the round of 16 here 31 years ago, he was a serve-and-volleyer.
"Big serve, came forward all the time, he would like to see me come forward a little bit more than I am. My argument is that I think I am better than him from the baseline, and he had a better serve than me, maybe.
"So he kind of inspires the way that I am playing on grass, the way I am moving forward, the way I am cutting off angles, wanting to mix in the serve-and-volley style, the vintage style of tennis every once and a while and be a bit more unpredictable on the court.
"He is the guy who puts our gameplans together and so far, so good."
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