WIMBLEDON star Ben Shelton left the BBC’s Annabel Croft red-faced after correcting her in his post-match interview.
The American star booked a spot in the quarter-final after beating Lorenzo Sonego.
The No10 seed won the last 16 clash 3-6 6-1 7-6 7-5.
And following the game, the 22-year-old was interviewed by BBC host Croft.
She opened by congratulating him for reaching the Wimbledon quarter finals for the first time in his career.
Croft, 58, then asked him about his time in college playing American football.
However, she was cheekily corrected by the Florida native over her apparently limited knowledge of the US sport.
Croft said: “Just finally, I was reading that in college you loved your American football and you were a quarterbacker?
“I hope I got that right. What are the comparisons between tennis and American football?”
Shelton was seen smiling at the phrasing of “quarterback”, before answering: “I grew up playing quarterback, or ‘quarterbacker’… either way.
“Probably the only thing that is a direct correlation between tennis is the serve, as you guys can probably see.
“That’s kind of the one thing that I took from football onto the tennis court.”
Court One spectators were left in stitches at the jokey rebuttal, while Croft herself was seen playing with her hair and chuckling at the correction.
Shelton then continued: “Obviously I have always loved athletics. Playing in a team sports, something bigger than yourself.
“Now I am obviously playing an individual sport but I have a team supporting me that I work with every day so that’s the most important thing to me.
“I don’t want to be out here by myself, I want to be doing it with people that I love and I have a lot of people that I love over there.”
Shelton also revealed his father, Bryan, was a huge inspiration for his style of play on grass courts – with his huge serves becoming a staple of his game with hits as fast as 145mph against Sonego.
He added: “Big serve, came forward all the time, he would like to see me come forward a little bit more than I am.
“My argument is that I think I am better than him from the baseline, and he had a better serve than me, maybe.
“So he kind of inspires the way that I am playing on grass, the way I am moving forward, the way I am cutting off angles, wanting to mix in the serve-and-volley style, the vintage style of tennis every once and a while and be a bit more unpredictable on the court.
“He is the guy who puts our gameplans together and so far, so good.”
He will play World No1 Jannik Sinner in the quarter-final after he progressed following Grigor Dimitrov’s retirement through injury when leading by two sets.
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