Jodar<\/a>, ranked 13 and rising fast, was ruthless to start with.<\/p>\nHe reached over his shoulder to save a point before winning it with an overhead smash as he broke for a 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Davidovich Fokina put pressure on his backhand, but Jodar kept calm as his opponent succumbed to a series of errors.<\/p>\n
Jodar broke again to go up 5-1 before closing out the first set after just 27 minutes with an ace.<\/p>\n
A fighting Davidovich Fokina refused to go away.<\/p>\n
He dropped serve to hand Jodar a 3-2 lead in the second set but finally came up with some answers in the next game, falling on his back to save a point at the net and level at 3-3.<\/p>\n
Both men battled to hold serve in a run of intense rallies, with the duo needing to restart a point during the ninth game when a ball rolled onto the court.<\/p>\n
Davidovich Fokina was shouting in frustration but saved two break points to go up 6-5 when Jodar returned into the net.<\/p>\n
But the younger Spaniard would not crumble, sending down a dangerous backhand to force a tie-break.<\/p>\n
The duo were neck and neck, but Davidovich Fokina held his nerve in the tie-break to force a decider.<\/p>\n
He was suddenly in control, breaking Jodar’s serve in the first game.<\/p>\n
His celebration was cut short when Jodar grabbed back a break.<\/p>\n
But it went his way again when Jodar fired long to hand the elder Spaniard a 3-2 lead.<\/p>\n
Jodar needed a medical timeout for his right thigh as he trailed Davidovich Fokina 4-3.<\/p>\n
He buckled in pain as he went for a point during a must-win ninth game, keeping the match alive for a bit longer but needing a trainer for his left thigh at 5-4.<\/p>\n
Davidovich Fokina sensed victory and claimed the title on his second championship point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alejandro Davidovich Fokina fought back to beat rising star Rafael Jodar in the final of the Shanghai Masters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-932923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932923","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=932923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}