Alejandro Davidovich Fokina beat top seed Alexander Zverev 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 on Saturday to reach the Shanghai Masters final, where he will play fellow Spaniard Rafael Jodar after the 20-year-old beat Daniil Medvedev 6-3, 6-4 in the other semi-final. The final is on Sunday.

It is the first meeting between the two Spaniards, and Jodar's first final at Masters 1000 level. Zverev's loss also changes his route to the world No. 1 ranking.

Davidovich Fokina turns the semi-final around

The 25th seed lost the first set 7-5 but broke Zverev in the second to level the match, and he led by a break early in the third. The match took two hours and two minutes, and Davidovich Fokina hit 36 winners. It was only his second win in eight meetings with Zverev.

I knew that if I stayed there all match, I could get at least one chance and I took it there in the second set.

Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, after beating Alexander Zverev, as reported by Reuters

He has now won nine straight matches in China, including the ATP 250 title in Chengdu last month. This is his second Masters 1000 final, after Monte Carlo on clay in 2022. Zverev, 29, has won seven Masters 1000 titles, but his best result in Shanghai remains the runner-up finish to Medvedev in 2019. He won the US Open this year, as we covered in our final recap.

Zverev said afterwards that he had "maybe overachieved this week" given how much tennis he had played. "I carried a little bit of injury, I carried fatigue into the tournament," he said, according to the tournament's official report.

Jodar reaches his first Masters 1000 final

Jodar, the 12th seed, beat fifth-seeded Medvedev, a former world No. 1 and the 2019 Shanghai champion, in straight sets. Jodar told reporters, as quoted by Reuters: "It was a very tough match."

Jodar is ranked 13th. Earlier this season he won his first ATP Tour title in Marrakech and reached the final in Washington and the semi-finals of the Canada Masters, according to the ATP. The Associated Press called him the youngest semi-finalist in the history of the Shanghai Masters.

Zverev's route to No. 1 now runs through Vienna

Zverev has already secured the year-end No. 1 ranking, according to the tournament's official report, Reuters and the Associated Press, but he is not yet the current world No. 1. Before the semi-final, the ATP set out his scenarios for replacing Jannik Sinner, who has said he will not play again this season because of a knee injury. Winning Shanghai would have guaranteed Zverev the No. 1 ranking on 2 November. Missing the final meant he would need to reach the semi-finals in Vienna.

With the Shanghai route closed, the Vienna route is the one left in those scenarios. Our earlier piece on Zverev and the No. 1 ranking was written before the result.

Our earlier coverage of the draw is in the Shanghai Masters draw guide. The singles final on Sunday 18 October is scheduled for not before 16:30 local time in Shanghai, which is 10:30 in Skopje, and the doubles final comes first at 14:00 Shanghai time.

Read the final preview: Rafael Jodar v Davidovich Fokina