Ben Shelton successfully defended his Canadian Open title on Thursday, defeating fellow American Brandon Nakashima 6-3, 7-6 (4) to win the National Bank Open in Montreal, according to The Guardian. The victory gives Shelton his second ATP Masters 1000 title at the event, a year after he broke through with his first-ever Masters 1000 championship in Toronto.
Shelton's win makes him only the fourth male player this century to capture the Canadian title in back-to-back years. Rafael Nadal was the most recent player to accomplish the feat, winning in 2018 and 2019, while Andy Murray did so in 2009-10 and Novak Djokovic in 2011-12, The Guardian reported. The company Shelton now keeps underscores how quickly he has established himself among the tour's elite at hard-court Masters events.
"For me to play the way that I played this week to go through this draw speaks to the work I have been putting in," Shelton said, according to The Guardian. "It also speaks to my mental toughness, my ability to focus through everything that was going on this week."
The fifth-seeded Shelton was efficient throughout the final, finishing with 22 winners against just 12 unforced errors. Nakashima, seeded 28th, produced 19 winners but committed 21 unforced errors, a gap in consistency that proved decisive in the tight match. The loss extended Nakashima's winless record against Shelton to 0-6 and denied him what would have been his first Masters 1000 title. Nakashima's only tour-level title remains a 2022 win in San Diego, per The Guardian's report.
Shelton controlled the opening set from the start, needing only 33 minutes to close it out. Neither player faced a break-point chance through the first six games, but Shelton broke Nakashima's serve for a 4-3 lead before securing another break to seal the set 6-3.
The second set turned into a serving contest, with both men holding firm and neither creating a single break-point opportunity across the full set. That pattern carried into the tiebreaker, where the two servers again dictated play. Shelton finally cracked Nakashima's serve to move ahead 4-2 in the tiebreak, and fittingly closed out the match on Nakashima's serve as well, sealing a 7-6 (4) second set and a 1-hour, 27-minute victory overall.
The Montreal triumph marked Shelton's fourth tournament title of the season, adding to earlier wins in Dallas, Munich and Stuttgart, according to The Guardian. The run of titles across hard and clay surfaces this year points to a broadening of Shelton's game beyond the big-serving, high-octane style that first drew attention when he burst onto the tour.
While Shelton and Nakashima were battling for the Canadian crown, the tour's attention was already shifting to the Cincinnati Open, where rain disrupted the opening day of play in Mason, Ohio. Despite the delays, Great Britain's Cameron Norrie pushed through to beat Croatia's Dino Prizmic 3-6, 6-1, 6-4, The Guardian reported.
Norrie's win came despite being outhit on winners 25-14. He rallied after dropping the first set, converting two of three break points in the second set while capitalizing on seven unforced errors from Prizmic. Norrie then broke Prizmic's serve in the seventh game of the third set to take control for good. He next faces a considerably tougher test in the second round against top-seeded Alexander Zverev of Germany.
Another notable result in Cincinnati saw Spain's Martin Landaluce end a six-match losing streak by upsetting Britain's Jack Draper, a former world No. 4, by a score of 6-3, 7-5. Draper struggled to find rhythm against the younger Spaniard, who produced fewer winners than Draper, 33 to 21, but nearly halved his unforced-error count, finishing with 24 compared to Draper's 47.
"I think the important thing today was believing in my shots, believing in my game," Landaluce said, according to The Guardian. "I did some big misses at times but that's OK, because it is how I enjoy playing."
Other first-round winners in Cincinnati included Germany's Jan-Lennard Struff, Argentina's Thiago Agustin Tirante, Canada's Denis Shapovalov, Serbia's Miomir Kecmanovic and Argentina's Mariano Navone. France's Terence Atmane advanced without playing a full match after Hungary's Marton Fucsovics retired.
For Shelton, the Canadian Open defense adds another significant line to a résumé that has grown rapidly over the past two seasons. His ability to back up a breakthrough Masters 1000 title with a successful title defense a year later is the kind of consistency that separates emerging contenders from established fixtures at the top of the men's game. With four titles already banked in 2025 across varied surfaces and conditions, from the indoor courts of Dallas to the clay of Munich and Stuttgart and now the hard courts of Montreal, Shelton has shown he can win in different settings against different styles of opponents.
The National Bank Open win also reinforces an increasingly competitive dynamic among American men's players, with Shelton and Nakashima both representing the United States in a Masters 1000 final, a rarer occurrence in recent years than it once was during previous eras of American tennis dominance. Nakashima, for his part, will look to build on a run to the final as he continues chasing his first title at the Masters 1000 level, a goal that remains just out of reach after Thursday's loss extended his winless head-to-head mark against Shelton to six matches.
