Teen Sensation Jódar Stuns Ruud, Becomes Youngest Shanghai Masters Semifinalist Ever
Spain's Rafael Jódar, 20, rallied from a set down for the fourth straight match to beat Casper Ruud 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 at the Shanghai Masters, setting a tournament age record and a semifinal date with Daniil Medvedev.
Rafael Jódar keeps rewriting his own record book. The 20-year-old Spaniard outlasted Norway's Casper Ruud 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 in a two-hour, 20-minute quarterfinal at the Rolex Shanghai Masters on Friday, becoming the youngest semifinalist in the tournament's history.
Ruud broke serve in the 10th game to snatch the opening set, but Jódar answered immediately, leveling at 2-2 in the second before ripping off a break for 5-4 and serving it out to love. In the decider, he broke the 24th-ranked Ruud three more times, finishing with five total breaks across the final two sets to close out the match.
Fourth comeback in a row
It was the fourth consecutive match at this Masters 1000 event in which Jódar has dropped the first set and come back to win — a run that has carried him through the fourth round and quarterfinals in Shanghai after an already breakout season that included a semifinal in Montreal and a quarterfinal at Roland Garros.
"[Ruud] played the important points in the first set better than me. I couldn't win the break points because of his serve," Jódar said afterward, crediting his own conditioning for the late turnaround.
The win, first reported by the Associated Press and confirmed on the tour's own results page, also has implications beyond the trophy. With Jannik Sinner shutting his season down with injury, Jódar jumped past Novak Djokovic and Alex de Minaur into the final automatic qualifying spot for the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, per ATP's Live Race standings.
In the other quarterfinal, former Shanghai champion Daniil Medvedev survived a mid-match wobble to beat American Tommy Paul 6-3, 1-6, 6-3, setting up Saturday's semifinal against Jódar — a rematch of sorts between the game's new wave and a player who won this same title in 2019.
Jódar isn't the only Spaniard still standing in Shanghai. Alejandro Davidovich Fokina also reached the semifinals, marking just the fifth time since 2014 that two Spanish men have made the same Masters 1000 final four — a nod to the country's deep pipeline since the Rafael Nadal era.
Jódar, who sits at 42-16 on tour this year and is 10-2 against top-30 opponents since July, will face Medvedev on Saturday with a spot in Sunday's final — and a near-lock on his first Nitto ATP Finals berth — on the line.