Djokovic beats Zverev 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 and moves to 32-0 in Beijing

Novak Djokovic beat top seed Alexander Zverev 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 on Sunday at the China Open, in 2 hours and 35 minutes, and reached a semi-final against Daniil Medvedev. The win takes the 39-year-old to 32-0 in Beijing, the best start to a tour-level event in the Open Era. He passed Rafael Nadal's 31-0 opening run at Roland Garros. A seventh China Open title is still two matches away.

Djokovic dropped serve in the first game. That break was enough to lose the opening set. He broke back the match in the second and third, and he closed with the only break of the decider. He said afterwards that he was glad he had held his nerve and played the right shots at 5-4 in the second set and again at 5-4 in the third. Zverev had arrived in form. The loss ends that run and leaves the Serbian, not the top seed, in the last four.

The other semi-finalist

Medvedev earlier beat Francisco Cerundolo 7-6(4), 6-3. He came to Beijing off an ATP 250 title in Hangzhou and is on a seven-match winning streak. He enters the semi-final with a 5-10 record against Djokovic, so the head-to-head favours the Serbian by ten wins to five. A streak of seven is real. A deficit of five wins in the direct record is also real. Monday's match is the first time in this tournament those two numbers meet.

The Beijing record is the unusual statistic. Winning 32 matches in a row at a single tour event, across years, means Djokovic has not lost on these courts since he started counting the streak the ATP now cites. Nadal's 31-0 at Roland Garros was the previous mark for a start at one event. Passing it in Beijing, at 39, on a Sunday night after losing the first set to the top seed, is a different kind of number from a ranking point. It says the conditions and the draw have suited him every time he has walked out here, until someone ends it.

What the score says

A 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 against Zverev is not a rout. Djokovic lost the first set from a single break and spent the next two sets taking the one break that mattered in the third. Two hours and 35 minutes is a full match for a semi-final still to come. Medvedev's quarter-final was shorter. If the Serbian's service games at 5-4 are the pattern he keeps, the semi-final turns on whether Medvedev can take an early break the way Zverev did, and whether he can hold it the way Zverev could not.

The tournament is an ATP 500. The title Djokovic is chasing would be his seventh in Beijing. He has not lost a match in the draw. The next one is against a former world number one who has just won a title in Hangzhou and who has beaten him five times. The record on the line on Monday is the 32, not the trophy.

A seventh title is still two matches away

Beijing is an ATP 500. The points for the title are smaller than a Masters, and the streak is the larger claim. Djokovic has won 32 consecutive matches at this event. He has not lost on these courts in the sequence the ATP is counting. Zverev was the highest seed in his path and the player in the best current form. Taking him in three sets, after losing the first, keeps the streak alive and sets a semi-final against a man who has won seven in a row of his own.

Medvedev's Hangzhou title is an ATP 250, one grade below Beijing. The head-to-head still favours Djokovic, ten matches to five. A first-set break of the kind Zverev took is the pattern Medvedev will try to repeat. Djokovic's answer on Sunday was the game at 5-4, twice. That is the shot pattern he will need again if the semi-final follows the same shape.