SHANGHAI (AP) \u2014 Valentin Vacherot earned the biggest win of his career by beating a hobbled Novak Djokovic 6-3, 6-4 on Saturday to reach the Shanghai Masters final \u2014 where he could face his cousin.<\/p>\n
The 204th-ranked Vacherot, of Monaco, was an alternate in qualifying but is having a career week. <\/p>\n
\u201cIs this real? I don\u2019t know,\u201d the 26-year-old Vacherot said moments after defeating the 24-time Grand Slam champion. \u201cTo have Novak on the other side of the court was, first of all, an unbelievable experience for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, believe it or not, his next court experience could be against his cousin \u2014 Arthur Rinderknech.<\/p>\n
Rinderknech faces 16th-seeded Daniil Medvedev in the other semifinal on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will do some recovery of course, but I will not miss it,\u201d Vacherot said of his cousin\u2019s match.<\/p>\n
The 38-year-old Djokovic was slowed throughout the match by a sore hip. He took a medical timeout after falling behind 4-3 in the opening set. He won only one point in the next two games.<\/p>\n
But the four-time tournament champion did not make an excuse of his physical struggles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about him,\u201d Djokovic said. \u201dI wish him all the best in the final, and the better player won today.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing from qualifications, it\u2019s an amazing story,\u201d Djokovic added. \u201dI told him at the net that he\u2019s had an amazing tournament, but more so his attitude is very good, and his game was amazing as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vacherot played collegiate tennis at Texas A&M.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHANGHAI (AP) \u2014 Valentin Vacherot earned the biggest win of his career by beating a hobbled Novak Djokovic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-205299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}