For a set and a half, Rafael Jodar looked like the next big thing taking his biggest step yet. Then Alejandro Davidovich Fokina did what he had done all week in Shanghai: refuse to go away. On Sunday the older of the two Spaniards, seven years Jodar’s senior, turned the final around and won 1-6 7-6 6-4, collecting a Masters 1000 crown for the very first time.
Early on, only one player was on court. Jodar, the No. 12 seed, raced through the first set in which he dropped serve not once and was never even threatened. When he went up a break at 2-3 in the second, the final seemed decided. Davidovich Fokina clawed the break back, edged a tense tie-break 7-5 and had more left in his legs in the decider, closing out the match after two hours and 28 minutes.
“Just a huge relief,” he said afterwards, admitting his mind was blank. He also thanked his team for a season that included two months on the sidelines with a back injury.
Shanghai had been a week of narrow getaways for him. Early in the week the American Frances Tiafoe was a single rally away from sending him home. Later Hurkacz and then the favourite Zverev each led him by a set, and both still went home beaten. The run also turns a once-awkward statistic on its head: the man who lost each of his first five finals on the tour, Monte-Carlo 2022 among them, has now converted three straight, following earlier wins this year in Mallorca and Chengdu, and is unbeaten in ten matches in China.
On Monday he climbs 13 places to a career-best world No. 13. Jodar, who had knocked out Daniil Medvedev in the semi-finals, rises to No. 11. A win would have taken him into the top ten for the first time, but he sits ninth in the race for the ATP Finals in Turin.
The doubles crown went to Austria, where Lucas Miedler and Neil Oberleitner dropped no set against Francisco Cabral and Jackson Tracy.
