It was 3:33 in the morning at Arthur Ashe Stadium when Ben Shelton hit a 146 mph serve Carlos Alcaraz couldn’t return, ending four hours and 28 minutes of tennis with an ace. The score read 6-7(5-7), 6-1, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6(10-7), the latest a match has ever finished in US Open history. Shelton ended Alcaraz’s title defence, his first win in four meetings with the Spaniard, and reached his first US Open semifinal, where he’ll face Frances Tiafoe.

Asked afterward who he was hoping wouldn’t have to be at work in three hours, Shelton named his best friend and his sister. Rodman, watching from the stands, wasn’t having it. “What about me??” she shot back.

Two days earlier, Trinity Rodman had been on a football pitch in Washington, D.C., nearly scoring for the Spirit against Bay FC before her shot came back off the crossbar; Paige Metayer buried the rebound for the winner. Less than 36 hours later, Rodman was in the stands at Ashe for Shelton’s opener against Tallon Griekspoor, having swapped being watched for watching. By September 2, she was there again, in a black cropped top that read “I MY BOYFRIEND,” cheering him past Hubert Hurkacz.

🚨TRENDING: Trinity Rodman couldn’t believe Ben Shelton didn’t mention her after his US Open win:

Shelton: “I’m just hoping my best friend and sister over there don’t have to be at work at 6 a.m. in 3 hours”

Trinity Rodman: “What about me?”


pic.twitter.com/UK5QHkbfc3

— Polymarket Sports (@PolymarketSport) September 9, 2026

It didn’t start that smoothly. On Kylie Kelce’s podcast, Rodman told the origin story herself. She messaged Shelton first, not long after winning Olympic gold in Paris. Two words and an emoji: “You’re sick, fire emoji.” “That’s it,” she said. “It worked, he responded within 10 minutes, so I won.” His reply matched her register: “Yeah, you were sick at the Olympics too, ha ha.” They met in person a week or two later, when Shelton flew out to stay at her house for the weekend. She was breaking down cardboard boxes when he arrived, greeted him still holding the scissors. He picked one up and started helping instead of standing around. That, she’s said, was the moment she knew.

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They went public in March 2025, and the visibility hasn’t always been comfortable. At Wimbledon that year, cameras cut to Rodman during a Shelton match and commentary drifted to her estranged father, Dennis, getting her name wrong in the process. She posted straight back: “My name is TRINITY not Tiffany. For Ben’s matches he has his family there as his support system, which includes his dad. My dad’s not even in MY life, no need to bring him up during HIS matches when I don’t even want him talked about during mine. It’s him and his loved ones’ moment.”

Rodman’s name carries a specific weight. Her father won five NBA titles, two with the Pistons in 1989 and 1990, three more with the Bulls in the 1990s alongside Michael Jordan, and is in the Hall of Fame. In his induction speech, when Trinity was nine, he said his one regret was not being a better father. On Call Her Daddy years later, she rolled her eyes recalling it. “I wish I was a better dad,” she said, mimicking him. “He’s said that in so many interviews. And it’s like, okay… something.”

Trinity Rodman and Ben Shelton celebrating his victory at the US open 🔥 pic.twitter.com/epfYth6GOL

— BrickCenter (@BrickCenter_) September 9, 2026

Strained ties

What that name has meant to her personally is a much harder story. In December 2024, on the same podcast, she described a father largely absent, financially and emotionally, at points when the family had no home to go back to. “Hearing his voice is painful,” she said. Asked directly about him later, she was blunter: “He’s not a dad. Maybe by blood, but nothing else.” She recalled one afternoon during her rookie season with the Washington Spirit: her father turned up to a quarterfinal unannounced, and she heard his voice mid-game before she saw him. She broke down afterward. “You took this happy moment from me,” she told him, “you f—ed with my head again.” He then went quiet, not for months, but for years, until they spoke again around the 2023 World Cup. Four years before any of that went public, she’d told The Guardian something gentler: “He is my dad at the end of the day and I don’t think it’s gonna go away, so I just answer the questions and then move on.”

Mostly, though, what she’s described about Shelton is simpler than any of that. Two athletes who understand exactly what the other one’s schedule costs. “It’s the best feeling in the world, honestly,” she said of it. Shelton plays Tiafoe on Thursday for a place in his first US Open final. Rodman will be somewhere in the stadium. She still has the scissors, presumably. He still shows up and picks one up.