Alexander Zverev<\/a> 5-7 \u20606-4 6-3 to reach the Shanghai Masters final, where he will face either former world number one Daniil Medvedev or fellow Spaniard Rafael Jodar.<\/p>\nThe 25th seed fired \u206036 winners in the two-hour, two-minute contest on Saturday to secure only his second victory over Zverev in eight meetings. His previous win against the German came in the round of \u206032 at the Canadian Open in 2023.<\/p>\n
Davidovich Fokina earned his first break of the match to take the second set, forcing a decider with a stunning backhand passing shot on the run that capped a bruising baseline exchange and brought the crowd to their feet.<\/p>\n
Carrying that momentum into \u200cthe final set, Davidovich Fokina broke Zverev for a 2-0 lead and never relinquished control, booking a place in the second ATP Masters 1000 final of his career after finishing runner-up in Monte Carlo in 2022.<\/p>\n
Landing 82 percent of his first serves and repeatedly exposing Zverev on the forehand side, he secured one of the biggest victories of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew that if I stayed there all match, I could get at least \u2060one chance and I took it there in the second set,\u201d \u2060Davidovich Fokina said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen in the third set, I think I was better physically. The early break in the third set gave me a lot of power.<\/p>\n
\u201cI focused on just playing, not mattering about the result but enjoying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zverev said fatigue had caught up with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a break is quite necessary now,\u201d the 29-year-old told reporters, saying he would monitor his fitness before a tournament in Vienna that begins October 24.<\/p>\n
\u201cI carried a little bit of injury, I carried fatigue into the tournament, and I\u2019m OK to lose to a player like this today,\u201d said Zverev, who had felt his ankle at times in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
Davidovich \u2060Fokina, who missed the North American hard-court swing in August because of injury, has now won nine consecutive matches in China after \u2060lifting his second tour-level title at the ATP 250 \u2060event in Chengdu last month.<\/p>\n
It was a disappointing end to the week for Zverev, a seven-time ATP Masters 1000 champion whose best result in Shanghai remains his runner-up finish to Medvedev in 2019.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old has otherwise enjoyed a \u200cfine season, ending his Grand Slam drought at the French Open before claiming a second major title at the US Open and securing the ATP year-end world number one ranking<\/a> \u200cafter \u200cJannik Sinner was sidelined for the remainder of the season with a knee injury.<\/p>\nFifth-seeded Russian Medvedev was playing 12th-seeded Jodar, 20, in the second semifinal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 26th-ranked Spaniard fought back to win 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 and will play either Daniil Medvedev or Rafael…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[1296,891,217,101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-806800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-asia-pacific","tag-china","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}