"It was disrespectful" - Ben Shelton pulls no punches in calling out treatment of athletes by media after Australian Open controversy

Ben Shelton recently surprised a lot of people when he spoke out against how some of the players, including himself, were treated at the 2025 Australian Open. He thought that the way post-match interviews were conducted was quite poor, and it's still something he thinks about today.

Ben Shelton recently sat down with People Magazine for an exclusive interview where he talked about the treatment received by professional players in media and a few other things. One of those was the comments he made at the Australian Open, which left people surprised. Ben Shelton didn't have a reputation to speak out, but he simply felt that he needed to talk about it.

“[It’s] something I noticed at a few different tournaments with different people, the way that athletes got treated or talked about. I thought that it was disrespectful at times, and that was something that I thought needed to be addressed. … I thought it was really poor in Australia this year,” said Shelton via People Magazine.

As he noted in his response, it's not solely exclusive to the Australian Open because it needed to happen at a few other events as well. It comes off as trying to be edgy for the sake of being edgy without any real substance, and that tends to be disrespectful to players because they are not some characters in a game we all play but real people with real emotions.

Ben Shelton's comments in Australia

2025 Australian Open - Source: Getty

Nothing that Ben Shelton said in Australia was controversial in itself, but what surprised many people is that Shelton spoke up. Despite being known as a very competitive player who holds his own against some of the best on the courts, Shelton isn't known for being overly outspoken.

That changed in Australia, where he initiated it himself by basically going on a monologue after the press conference was concluded. As for what he said, well, he called on reporters to do better.

“I feel like broadcasters should be helping us grow our sport and help these athletes who just won matches on the biggest stage enjoy one of their biggest moments. I feel like there's just been a lot of negativity."

In fairness to Shelton, there have been some rather odd comments in some of the post-match interviews. Most of the time it came off as trying to make a headline out of nothing, which is understandable to some degree.

However, when you're a player and headline-hunting happens at your expense, you won't be thrilled by it for obvious reasons. Shelton felt the need to call that out, and he did.