Rafa Jódar knocks down Medvedev and meets Davidovich in a Spanish final in Shanghai

What Rafa Jódar is achieving in his first year at the highest level of tennis does not make any sense. He has just entered the final in Shanghai, where he will face Davidovich this Sunday, achieving for the first time in history that a Spaniard is the winner of this tournament.

Medvedev came out to scare a newcomer, Rafa Jódar. Newly arrived at the Shanghai Masters 1000, yes, but also on the ATP circuit, where he is already the best debutant in history. They had never faced each other, but they each knew very well who they were in front of, and the aggressiveness was visible from the first points.

The first game already predicted what was going to happen, the game that was going to be seen. 13 minutes in which the Spaniard had the service and took advantage of it, with two direct serve points. The first break didn't take long either, making it 3-1 in the first set by Jódar, confirming that Medvedev had come out to intimidate him, but that he has enough character not to give up. And tennis, a lot of tennis.

In the next game, Daniil recovered the break of disadvantage on the fourth ball, but the Madrid native was well in depth, with his intuition nailed and subtracting like a charm. The demand was maximum physically, with a very high intensity and with two tennis players who reflected, sweating their hardest, what each point of that match meant. Long, intense and beautiful.

It is not known what was going through Daniil Medvedev's head, but surely, although he said that "he had seen Jódar on TV and he is incredible", the 20-year-old boy was surprising him. The whim of the Russian arrived, who threatened to withdraw from the game if they did not show him the penultimate ball of one of the points. They showed it to him: he was not right. And Jódar continued doing his thing. Open serve and ACE from the Spanish for 5-2.

The first set went to Jódar. 6-3 at a very high level of tennis, constantly going from one side of the court to the other, which forced Rafa to call the physio and go with him to the locker room. He returned the same as he left, without bandages and running from the first point, because what did not change was the intensity of the game. If he had any discomfort, the man from Madrid either found the magic of the physio or it was minimal, because the first game ended with a break for Jódar, who was still intact on the court.

But what was beginning to show was Jódar's fatigue. Daniil took advantage of it and added three games in a row, the last blank by Rafa, making it 2-3 in the second set and seeing Jódar's most critical part in the match. And when it seemed that Medvedev had turned the game around, the Spaniard ended that streak and signed his own.

With the wind against him, after having asked for the physio and already at a critical point of fatigue, Rafa closed the score 5-3 with his sixth ace. He had to subtract to win the match, but Medvedev forced him to suffer one more game. But it was that, one more, because Jódar closed the match in a spectacular way and managed, for the first time, for a Spaniard to lift the Shanghai Master 1000 trophy.

Davidovich surprises number 1

The Malaga tennis player Alejandro Davidovich Fokina became the first finalist of the Shanghai Masters 1,000 this Saturday after defeating the German Alexander Zverev 5-7, 6-4 and 6-3, already confirmed as world number one in tennis in 2026.