Djokovic Trumps Nadal To Win Fourth Beijing Crown: Novak Djokovic won his fourth China Open crown on Sunday with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Rafael Nadal. The day before the Serb surrenders his No. 1 spot in the Emirates ATP Rankings to Nadal, he won their 38th contest and captured his fourth tour-level crown of the season. Djokovic has a 19-0 record in Beijing, also winning the title in 2009 (d. Cilic), 2010 (d. Ferrer) and 2012 (d. Tsonga). He is the first four-time winner of this ATP World Tour 500 hard-court tournament and received 500 Emirates ATP Rankings points and $557,100. Djokovic ended a run of three defeats against Nadal as he improved to a 16-22 mark in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series. Since dethroning eight-time champion Nadal in the final of the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters in April, Djokovic had lost to Nadal in the Roland Garros semi-finals, the Rogers Cup semi-finals and the US Open final. The battle for No. 1 had been decided on Saturday, when Nadal reached the Beijing final with victory over Tomas Berdych in the semi-finals. But Djokovic regrouped quickly and made a fast start to the final, breaking serve in Nadal’s first service game before going on to close out the 35-minute first set, having dropped just two points on serve. Djokovic built on his momentum with an early break in the second set and was again impenetrable on serve, surrendering just four points as he closed out victory in 87 minutes. The 26-year-old Djokovic opened his season with victory at the Australian Open (d. Murray) and won his second title of the season at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships (d. Berdych). He has a 38-21 finals record. Nadal had been riding a 22-match winning streak, winning titles at the Rogers Cup, the Western & Southern Open (d. Isner) and the US Open since suffering a shock first-round exit at Wimbledon (l. to Darcis). He had been chasing his 11th tour-level title of an astonishing comeback season, which has seen him compile a 65-4 match record and reclaim World No. 1 for the first time since 3rd July 2011.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 10:51:16 +0000
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