Injury has been a problem all tournament for Djokovic and he vomited during his previous matches after struggling with the heat and humidity.<\/p>\n
The issues flared up again in Saturday’s semi-final with the 38-year-old receiving medical treatment on several occasions.<\/p>\n
At the start of the seventh game, the former world number one had to take an extended medical break, lying on his stomach shirtless as a physio attended to his back.<\/p>\n
He received treatment again at the break but battled through into the second set.<\/p>\n
Despite visibly struggling, the Serb provided the Shanghai crowd with hopes of a comeback when he moved into a 4-3 lead before Vacherot reeled off three straight games to reach the final.<\/p>\n
“I want to congratulate Valentin for reaching his first Masters final,” Djokovic said. <\/p>\n
“Going from qualifications, it’s an amazing story. I told him at the net that he’s had an amazing tournament, but more so his attitude is very good and his game was amazing as well.<\/p>\n
“So it’s all about him. I wish him all the best in the finals and the better player won today.”<\/p>\n
Vacherot, who ensured he would rise into the top 100 for the first time by defeating Holger Rune in the quarter-finals, has now climbed 146 spots to world number 58 in the live rankings as a result of his Shanghai run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Injury has been a problem all tournament for Djokovic and he vomited during his previous matches after struggling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-205408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}