In the early hours of a Wednesday morning, Ben Shelton completed a five-set victory over Carlos Alcaraz at 3:33 a.m., reigniting a perennial question about whether professional tennis asks too much of its audience in pursuit of its own demanding soul. Andy Roddick, the last American man to win the US Open, stepped forward not to dismiss the complaint but to complicate it — arguing that the very qualities that make the sport grueling are the same ones that make it worth watching. The debate sits at a familiar crossroads in sport: the tension between accessibility and authenticity, between the c