The Spanish tennis player Alejandro Davidovich has been proclaimed champion of the Shanghai tournament (China), the eighth ATP Masters 1,000 of the season and which is played on hard courts, after beating his compatriot Rafa Jódar in the final this Sunday (1-6, 7-6(5), 6-4), a result that makes him the first Spaniard to win the title in the Asian competition.
After the finals lost by Rafa Nadal (2009 and 2017), David Ferrer (2011) and Roberto Bautista (2016), the man from Malaga has been able to break the curse of the ‘Armada’ in Shanghai and has won his third title of the year, after those achieved in Mallorca and Chengdu (China), and of his career.
In his second ATP Masters 1,000 final – after falling in Monte Carlo 2022 -, Davidovich was finally able to win his first title in the category, which on Monday will lift him to the best ranking of his career, number 13 in the world.
All after a final that began with overwhelming dominance by the Madrid player. The current world number 13, who crushed Russian Daniil Medvedev in the semifinals (6-3, 6-4), broke his opponent’s game on his first opportunity, in the second game, and managed to lead 3-0. Davidovich stopped the bleeding by winning his second serve, but could not prevent Jódar from winning the last three games to finish the first set in just 27 minutes.
The man from Malaga, number 26 in the ATP ranking and who reached the final after coming back from the German Alexander Zverev (5-7, 6-4, 6-3), improved his performance in the second set, in which, however, he failed to generate any break balls in the first games against an intractable Jódar, who patiently waited for his first opportunity, in the fifth game, to deal a new blow to his compatriot.
Davidovich reacted to the break by causing two breaking balls, the second of them after a double fault from his rival, and achieved the ‘counterbreak’ to stay alive in the match (3-3). A tough battle then began in which both were surviving their opponent’s break chances -five for Jódar and one for Davidovich-.
Thus, the partial headed inevitably towards the ‘tie-break’. Both managed to defend their first serves (5-5), until in the eleventh minigame Davidovich managed to break to find a set point that he took advantage of to force the third set.
He maintained his strength at the start of the final set, taking advantage of his third opportunity to break Jódar’s serve, who returned the break to regain the initiative (1-2). A new break in the fifth game reinforced him emotionally, while the Spaniard, with many more forced errors in this section, tried to force a new sudden death.
However, Davidovich resisted and, on his second match point, closed the duel in two hours and 27 minutes of fighting to lift the third trophy of his career and of the year, after those in Mallorca and Chengdu (China), both in the ATP 250 category, and the first in the ATP Masters 1,000 category. Jódar, who premiered his record in Marrakech (Morocco) in 2026, will have to wait.
