Alexander Zverev fails in Beijing against Novak Djokovic

Alexander Zverev suffered a setback on his way to the tennis throne. The two-time Grand Slam tournament champion lost a high-class game against the Serbian Novak Djokovic 6:4, 4:6, 4:6 at the ATP 500 tournament in Beijing and thus missed out on a place in the semi-finals.

This means that Zverev can no longer displace Jannik Sinner from first place in the world rankings at the tournaments in Asia. For that he would have had to win in Beijing and then in Shanghai. Since Sinner had to cancel next week's Masters 1000 event due to knee problems, Zverev can at least reduce the gap further.

Djokovic converted his second match point against Zverev after 2:34 hours. The 39-year-old will now face Russian Daniil Medvedev in the semi-finals. It was Djokovic's 32nd win in a row in Beijing; the long-standing world number one has never lost a game there.

“These are the moments for which I still play tennis,” said Djokovic after his impressive performance. “He is the best player in the world at the moment, has an incredible run and a lot of self-confidence. When he's pitching like he is right now, he's a nightmare to play against. You have to take advantage of the few chances you get and luckily I was able to do that today,” said the Serb.

In a game at the highest level, the first set lasted almost an hour before Zverev used his second set point to make it 6:4. In the second round, Zverev missed a break point when the score was 4:4, only to give up his serve shortly afterwards and thus the set. In the third set, both also fought a top-level duel, in which Zverev ran out of steam a bit at the end.

Zverev had recently played a lot of tennis. After his triumph at the US Open in New York, Zverev also played for Germany in the Davis Cup against Croatia and for Team Europe in the Laver Cup against Team World and won in each case.

His big goal by the end of the year is to replace Sinner as number one in the world. And the chances are good despite the bitter defeat against Djokovic. Because Sinner still has to take a break due to knee problems and has now canceled the Masters tournament in Shanghai from October 7th to 18th. He would have started there as defending champion and is now losing a lot of world ranking points. When the Italian will return to the tour is completely uncertain.

Zverev would be only the second German after Boris Becker on the tennis throne among men. Becker was number one in the world for a total of twelve weeks.

At the beginning of February after the Australian Open, Zverev was still over 9,000 points behind the then leader Carlos Alcaraz and almost 5,700 behind second-placed Sinner. Because Alcaraz was out for months this year due to a wrist injury and Sinner now has to take a break, the situation has changed in Zverev's favor.