Who is this man roping backhand winners down the line, and where did he come from? Yes, Ben Shelton excels in Canada. But last year, he won the National Bank Open in Toronto mostly thanks to the fact that his backhand held up in crosscourt exchanges with the forehands of Taylor Fritz and Alex de Minaur, letting the rest of his game do the work. In defending his title in Montreal this past week, his backhand has been a damn weapon. This man of the historically abysmal return has broken serve almost at will. Take his quarterfinal against Jakub Mensik: a 6–3, 6–1 demolition in which Shelton broke one of the best servers in the world four times, never faced a break point himself, and hit three unforced errors. Two of them were in the last game. That is 2014 Shanghai Novak Djokovic shit.

In the final on Thursday night, Shelton dismissed Brandon Nakashima — a fairly utilitarian, unimaginative player with a terrific first serve — 6–3, 7–6 (4). Reader, I saw sights to challenge my vision. On set point in the opener, Shelton somehow got his racquet on a perfect Nakashima serve down the T, the kind that looks like it’s going out until it somehow catches a piece of both lines, then anticipated Nakashima’s approach shot and blasted a forehand winner down the line. The first point of that game saw Nakashima hit three winner-caliber shots, only for Shelton to chase them all down and finish with another scorching forehand pass, this time crosscourt. Has Nadal been coaching him in secret? Did Rafa de-age by 20 years and play the match himself, wearing a Mission: Impossible-style Shelton mask?

Shelton wasn’t really in danger all tournament, save being down a break in both sets he played against Joao Fonseca, before the Brazilian became possessed by a melting-down Aryna Sabalenka at 1–0, 40–15. But it’s less that he didn’t drop a set against Jenson Brooksby, Zizou Bergs, Fonseca, Mensik, and Nakashima and more that he played at a level befitting a world No. 1 for meaningful stretches. Anybody would have had their hands full with this version of Shelton in the final. You wouldn’t think it, given his shotmaking abilities and tumultuous shot tolerance temperature, but Shelton’s struggles are more with his peak than his consistency. He’s reliably in the mid-late rounds of majors, excepting hiccups on the natural surfaces this year. He’s landed titles on all three surfaces. But his best win is either over a 2023 Jannik Sinner (who’s since won 22 consecutive sets over him) or Taylor Fritz, making me a devout skeptic that he can find a wide-enough gap in the Sincaraz regime to win a major. This run has me questioning my faith.

Shelton is an occasionally maddening player to watch. He’s relentlessly positive during his matches, yelling in a somewhat nasal voice after everything from brilliant winners to win sets to bland service winners at 1–1, 15–love. Then he’ll blast a low-percentage forehand down the line wide to lose a five-setter at Wimbledon and show so little anguish that I wonder if he’s sufficiently bothered to correct the erroneous impulse next time out. Easy to forget now that he’s defended his title in Canada and looks like a potential Tier 1 US Open favorite pending the health of Sincaraz: Shelton is 1–2 at the last two majors, losing in straight sets to Raphael Collignon and from two-sets-to-one up to Otto Virtanen. There wasn’t much indication heading into Canada that Shelton would play the best tennis of his life; this article began as a pitch about him being in a slump. Almost as impressive as the tennis in Montreal was how Shelton summoned it as if out of necessity, with more than a quarter of his ranking points on the line.

Canada Shelton is an intimidating sight for any player. He patched up his backhand and added some spikes. He returned as well as anybody in the tournament besides Rafael Jodar, who looked like a plausible champion before making a fatigued exit against Nakashima. His forehand was a weapon even from behind the baseline — look at the thunderbolt down the line he hit on championship point. With his usual weaknesses either papered over or turned into strengths, what’s a player to do against Big Ben? Sinner will keep hitting with such unrelenting pace and depth to negate all his attacks. Carlitos will conjure magic in even greater quantities than Ben can. It’s a tough ask to repeat the best tennis of your life more than once a year, and if Shelton can simply peak like clockwork in Canada each year, that’ll be a fine legacy. But if what we saw this week was sustainable, he’ll be grasping at shinier hardware before long.