Alejandro Davidovich Fokina trailed Rafael Jodar by a set and a break in Sunday’s Shanghai Masters final and won it anyway. The 27-year-old Spaniard came back to beat his 20-year-old countryman 1-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 in two hours and 28 minutes at Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena, taking the first Masters 1000 title of his career.

For a set, Jodar gave him nothing. The 12th seed broke in the second game, broke again with a clean backhand winner for 5-1 and closed out the opener without facing a break point on his own serve. He won all seven points that ran longer than nine shots.

Davidovich Fokina was a break down again at 2-3 in the second set when the match turned. He broke straight back on his second break point of the next game, sprinting forward to finish the point at the net and ending up sprawled across the court. Then he defended. He saved a break point to hold for 4-3, two more to hold for 5-4 and two more again to hold for 6-5, and, as he had against top seed Alexander Zverev in the semifinals on Saturday, he took the second set in a tie-break.

The decider opened with a break each. From there it was Davidovich Fokina who looked the fresher player. He broke again in the fifth game and kept the lead to the end, converting three of the seven break points he earned in the match. “I don’t have any words right now,” Davidovich Fokina said. “I have a blank mind. I don’t know what to say and I don’t know how I feel.

Just a huge relief. After the first set I had to keep trying, keep pushing, like every match in the tournament. In the tie-break, I believed in myself again and tried to play the ball. He was playing huge tennis. “In the third set, maybe I had a bit more fitness physically. He’s an amazing player and it was very tough to play against him today.”

The week. The final was the last of several escapes. Davidovich Fokina, the 25th seed, saved a match point against Frances Tiafoe in the third round and came from a set down to beat Hubert Hurkacz 1-6, 6-3, 7-6(6) in the fourth. Arthur Gea retired trailing 4-1 in their quarterfinal, and Davidovich Fokina came from a set down again to beat Zverev 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 in the semifinals.

He came to Shanghai on a run. Davidovich Fokina missed two months of the season with a back injury and returned to win the title in Chengdu in late September; Shanghai stretched his winning streak in China to 10 matches. He lost his first five tour-level finals, including his only previous Masters 1000 final, at Monte-Carlo in 2022. He has now won his last three: Mallorca, Chengdu and Shanghai.

“Of course I am very grateful for the team I have,” he said. “They’ve supported me every day for many years and of course this year was a tough one. Not only two months out, I also skipped a couple more tournaments this year with [other] injuries. So it was not an easy one.”

He also named a friend who had been through the same thing. “I remember now Arthur Fils, who is a very good friend of mine and skipped a lot of tournaments this year. He came back stronger, winning matches. So that gave me a lot of power, that if he could do it, I could do it too.”

Jodar. The final was Jodar’s first at Masters 1000 level and his first meeting with Davidovich Fokina. He reached it as the youngest semifinalist in the tournament’s history, having come from a set down in four straight matches, and then beat 2019 champion Daniil Medvedev 6-3, 6-4 on Saturday without dropping a set. He finished that one on his own serve, putting away a forehand down the line off a weak Medvedev smash. Earlier in the week he had beaten Casper Ruud in the quarterfinals, a run covered in our semifinal line-up report.

What it means. The runner-up points still move Jodar toward a debut at the ATP Finals in his first full season. He leaves Shanghai ninth in the Live Race to Turin on 3,159 points, behind Fils on 3,325. With Jannik Sinner out for the rest of the season, ninth is effectively the last of the eight qualifying places. Alex de Minaur, on 2,880, and Novak Djokovic, on 2,840, are the nearest players below him. The full picture is in our Race to Turin guide, and the rules for replacements are in ATP Finals alternates explained.

For Davidovich Fokina, the title is the biggest of a season that has now produced three. Zverev’s semifinal loss to him is covered in our semifinal report.

What’s next. Shanghai was the penultimate Masters 1000 event of the year. The last is the Paris Masters, which closes the regular season’s run of 1000-level events before Turin. Tournament history and past champions are in the Shanghai Masters guide.

Alejandro Davidovich Fokina went a set and most of another without breaking Alexander Zverev’s serve on Saturday. When the break came, it took the second set, and the Spaniard went on to beat the top seed 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 and reach the final of the Rolex Shanghai Masters.

Zverev had the first set on his terms. He did not face a break point in it, broke for 6-5 and served it out with an ace. Davidovich Fokina kept serving wide to Zverev’s forehand and swinging freely from the baseline, won 82 per cent of his first-serve points and finished with 36 winners.

He levelled the match with a backhand pass on the run, and at the start of the third Zverev double-faulted his way into an early break. Davidovich Fokina led 3-0, served for the match at 5-2, let two match points go and then closed it out on his own serve. “I was a little bit nervous,” Davidovich Fokina said of his start. “But I keep going, I keep fighting, every ball.”

The 25th seed, ranked No. 26, has now won nine matches in a row in China, starting with his title in Chengdu last month. This is his second Masters 1000 final, four years after he lost the 2022 Monte-Carlo final to Stefanos Tsitsipas. The win was his sixth over a top-five player and his first this season, and only his second against Zverev in eight meetings; the first came at the 2023 Canadian Open.

He is the fourth-lowest-ranked finalist in Shanghai’s history and rises to No. 15 in the live rankings. Zverev, the Roland Garros and US Open champion this year, had already secured the year-end No. 1 ranking in Shanghai. He was playing for his second Masters 1000 final of 2026, after losing to Jannik Sinner in Madrid.

The other semifinal. Davidovich Fokina will play Daniil Medvedev or Rafael Jodar in Sunday’s final. Their semifinal, the first meeting between them, had not finished when this report was filed. Medvedev, the fifth seed, is the 2019 champion and the only former winner left in the draw. Jodar, 20, is the youngest semifinalist in the tournament’s history and has come from a set down in all four of his matches this week. A Jodar win would make it an all-Spanish final.

Race to Turin. Both Medvedev and Jodar are chasing places at the Nitto ATP Finals. After Friday’s quarterfinals Jodar was ninth in the Live Race with Medvedev directly above him, and with Sinner out for the season the ninth place is effectively a qualifying place. Our Race to Turin guide sets out how the field is completed, and the Paris Masters is the last Masters 1000 event before Turin.

What’s next. The final is on Sunday. Friday’s quarterfinals, including Jodar’s win over Casper Ruud, are covered in our semifinal line-up report, and the Shanghai Masters guide has the event’s format, points and past champions.

Rafael Jodar dropped the opening set for a fourth straight match at the Rolex Shanghai Masters on Friday and won again, beating Casper Ruud 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 to become the youngest semifinalist in the tournament’s history.

For an hour Ruud had the match where he wanted it. He broke in the 10th game to take the first set, and when Jodar went up a break early in the second, the Norwegian took it straight back for 2-2. From there Jodar’s forehand began to decide the rallies. He broke for 5-4, served out the set to love and broke Ruud three more times in the decider, five breaks in all across the last two sets of a match that lasted two hours and 20 minutes.

The 20-year-old Spaniard is 42-16 in his first full season on the ATP Tour and has now reached five tour-level semifinals in 2026, two of them at Masters 1000 level after Montreal. Jodar plays Daniil Medvedev or Tommy Paul for a place in Sunday’s final; their quarterfinal had not finished when this report was filed. With Alejandro Davidovich Fokina also through, it is only the fifth time since 2014 that two Spaniards have reached the semifinals of the same Masters 1000 event.

The other half. Alexander Zverev beat Alex de Minaur 6-4, 6-4 in 78 minutes on Thursday to reach his third Shanghai semifinal and his first since 2019. He took the only break of the first set with a forehand winner at 2-2, 0-40, then saved three break points to hold for 4-2. In the second he saved two more to hold for 3-3 and broke de Minaur in the next game. Zverev won 35 of 44 points behind his first serve, hit 10 aces and leads their head-to-head 9-4.

“I was, a lot of the time, outhitting Alex, which is difficult to do from the baseline because he is so fast and he loves this kind of court speed here,” Zverev said. “I felt good and I’m happy with the step up from the past couple of matches.”

Gea’s quarterfinal. Zverev’s semifinal opponent on Saturday is Davidovich Fokina, the 25th seed, who was leading Arthur Gea 4-1 after 22 minutes when the Frenchman retired with a psoas injury. Gea, 21, was playing the first Masters 1000 event of his career and had won 13 of his previous 15 tour-level matches, including Shanghai wins over Ben Shelton and Jakub Mensik.

“I felt pain in the psoas this morning. It was quite painful,” Gea said. “I went to the physio and did treatment and before the match I wasn’t sure if I should go on court. I tried from the beginning but it was not enough to play full. It would have been too dangerous for the end of the season, so I couldn’t continue.” He said he would have tests in France.

Davidovich Fokina, who had come through deciding-set tie-breaks against Frances Tiafoe and Hubert Hurkacz, is into his fourth Masters 1000 semifinal after Monte-Carlo in 2022, Toronto in 2023 and Monte-Carlo in 2025. He has won eight straight matches in China since taking the Chengdu title, after a back injury kept him out of the North American hard-court swing. “I’ve been on court a lot of time, and my body has to recover,” he said. “I’m blessed that I have two days more to recover better my body.”

The Race to Turin. Jodar’s win lifted him above Novak Djokovic and de Minaur into ninth in the Live Race to Turin, with Medvedev directly above him. Because Jannik Sinner, second in the Race, has ended his season with a knee injury, ninth is effectively the last qualifying place. The top seven in the Race after the Paris Masters qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals; the eighth berth goes to a current-year Grand Slam champion ranked between eighth and 20th if there is one, and otherwise to the player in eighth. GTN’s Race to Turin tracker sets out the full standings, and the alternates rule explains what happens if a qualifier withdraws. The Live Race moves after every match, as the Live Rankings do.

No. 1. Zverev, already assured of finishing 2026 as year-end No. 1, could rise to No. 1 in the weekly rankings for the first time as early as 2 November. “Once Jannik unfortunately announced he won’t play for the rest of the year, I’m 4,000 points ahead of everyone else, so I trust myself enough that I’m going to win [enough matches],” he said.

Ruud and Gea. Ruud reached the last eight after Felix Auger-Aliassime retired against him in the fourth round, as GTN reported on Wednesday. Gea leaves Shanghai at No. 44 in the Live Rankings and set for his top-50 debut.

What’s next. The semifinals are on Saturday: Zverev against Davidovich Fokina, and Jodar against Medvedev or Paul. The Shanghai Masters final is on Sunday, 18 October.