Bryan Shelton: Balancing roles of dad & coach to help Ben surge to the top

ATP Coach Spotlight

Bryan Shelton: Balancing roles of dad & coach to help Ben surge to the top

Shelton speaks exclusively to ATPTour.com

ATP Tour/Getty Images Bryan Shelton became full-time traveling coach for his son, Ben, in June 2023. By Andrew Eichenholz

Bryan Shelton has worn a lot of hats during his life in tennis: No. 55 player in the PIF ATP Rankings, two-time ATP Tour titlist and one of the best college coaches in history among them. Now the American is making his mark in his latest chapter: coach of his son, Ben.

After leading the Georgia Institute of Technology women’s team to a national title and helping the University of Florida’s men’s team to NCAA glory. Now Shelton has guided Ben, a member of that Florida team, to World No. 6 and contender status at the biggest tournaments in the world.

“It was really different. When you're working with a programme, you're not just working with players,” Shelton told ATPTour.com. “But you've got staff, and you've got budgets, and you've got a lot of things to deal with, especially with the recruiting and the number of hours that you have to spend on the phone, traveling, going to see players, talking to parents. All of those things where a large part of the job.”

Now there is one focus: Ben and his tennis. Bryan has been able to dedicate more time to player development, while applying the principles from his college coaching career to best help his charge.

“We've got to still have a team around this that works with us, that we work with. We have agents that help with a lot of the logistical stuff. We have a strength coach, we have a physio, we have a lot of people that are still working as part of the team,” Shelton said. “So some of that is similar and I help to be the leader of that and the leader of the group and try to make sure that everyone's working together on the same page at all times.”

The other layer of complication is balancing life as father and coach. Family is of the utmost importance to Shelton, and he draws clear lines between when he is Ben’s dad and when he is his coach.

“Typically, when we show up at the courts, that's when we start the process of really diving into the tennis preparation before practice, preparation before the warmup, preparation before the match,” Shelton said. “We've got windows when it's just my coach's hat on completely and my dad hat is completely off until the match is done and the day is done at the courts. Then we get in the car, heading home and there's really no more talk of tennis.

“I might go back to my room at the hotel, and I might watch video or do some more work. But as far as my relationship with Ben, it's strictly dad in certain hours and it's strictly coach in other hours.”

In 2022, Ben won the NCAA singles title and was still outside the world's Top 500. After turning professional, he traveled with the likes of veteran coach Dean Goldfine until his father resigned his role at Florida one year later to become his traveling coach.

Bryan had long crafted his son’s game. But doing so on the ATP Tour while traveling the world together is a different experience, which they have adapted to.

“We just have found a good rhythm of when to turn it on and when to turn it off,” Shelton said. “And he gives me all the signals as well when he really doesn't want to talk about tennis. He's never shy.”

Ben and Bryan at Atlanta in 2022.

Bryan’s daughter, Emma, was in the spotlight during Wimbledon when Ben helped her sister get out of work. What many fans might not realise is that Emma was a top college player herself, completing her career at Florida. Bryan nurtured her tennis just like he did Ben's, but the siblings brought different personalities to the court.

“They were just almost opposites. You have my daughter who's a little bit more of an introvert, and you have Ben, who's a total extrovert. One that has confidence, no matter what he does, and the other one that is very critical of herself,” Bryan said. “Most of the time, they would go off to a tournament and she might have a better result than him, especially early on, and come home after winning a junior event, and he lost maybe in the quarters or semi-finals. I'd ask them both the same question, ‘What did you do well and what could you have done better?’

“Ben had really nothing that he could have done better, in his opinion, and he just needed to grow and get stronger. And then my daughter, who’d maybe won the tournament, would have a long list of things she could have done better. So completely different.”

Bryan enjoyed a chuckle thinking of those memories — his disposition is more similar to that of his daughter’s. One of Shelton's hangups as a professional was his confidence on court, and he has been able to use what he learned from that during his coaching career.

“I think that I always said that if I could have been a more confident player, I would have done a lot better overall,” Shelton said. “I wanted to be a Top 50 player. I didn't quite get there and I felt like I got close, but I think just having a little bit more self belief — belief in the work that I was doing, belief in this athleticism and skills that I had — that I could go out there and perform on the biggest stages and play my best tennis. I never really felt like I was able to fully do that.”

But one thing that has been fundamental from playing to coaching has been Shelton’s love of tennis. He calls himself a “tennis nerd” who has always been inquisitive about why certain players have success and how to apply those principles to his players.

“Ben's a lefty, and so it's been fun to really dive in and see what made Nadal so great, as far as just how he carried himself, but also his tactics and patterns of play and just the things that made him really, really tough to beat out there,” Shelton said. “[I can] try to help Ben to understand some of the things that Rafa did, that he can also try to emulate.

"Then you look at Jack Draper having success and it's another lefty. It's fun for me to dive in deep and look at not only Ben's stats and the analytics, but look at other players out there, [like] Alcaraz and Sinner, and see what makes them great and really try to keep learning as we go through this process.”

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