Djokovic takes a seventh Beijing title after de Minaur retires at 7-6, 0-1

Novak Djokovic won a seventh China Open title in Beijing on Tuesday when Alex de Minaur retired injured with the score at 7-6 (3), 0-1. The match had lasted one hour and 23 minutes. It was Djokovic's first title of the 2026 season and the 102nd of his career. He also became the first player to win at least one title in 21 consecutive seasons, and he extended a Beijing record that now stands at 34 wins from 34 matches.

The first set took 67 minutes and went to a tie-break. No one was broken in the 13 completed games of the match. Djokovic had a break point in the second game and did not take it. He saved a break point in the fifth. De Minaur escaped pressure in the next game on the strength of his serve. In the tie-break Djokovic took two mini-breaks and closed it 7-3. Sofascore listed him as the No. 6 seed for the week and de Minaur as the No. 5.

Both players took medical treatment after the set. De Minaur held serve to lead 1-0 in the second, then stopped. The official result is a retirement, not a completed two-set win. That distinction matters for the record of the match and does not matter for the trophy. A retirement after the first ball of the match still awards the title. This one came after a full set of high-level serving.

Djokovic's season before Beijing had not produced a trophy. At 39 he is no longer the week-to-week favourite he was for a decade, and the ranking list has him outside the top four. A 102nd title, and a 21st straight season with at least one, is the statistic that keeps him in a category of his own even when the ranking does not. No other man has a run of seasons with a title that long. The Beijing event has been the most reliable line in that run: he has never lost a completed match there, and he has now won the tournament seven times.

De Minaur's withdrawal is the other half of the result. He had reached the final as the fifth seed, which is the best weekly position of the two, and he had held serve through a set that neither man broke. The injury that stopped him was serious enough that he did not continue after the change of ends and the one game he held. The tournament medical note was not published in the first reports. What is public is the score at the stop, and the fact that both men had already called for the trainer.

For the race to Turin, a title in Beijing puts points on Djokovic's slate at a moment when the indoor season is about to start. Jannik Sinner, the man at No. 1, has said he will not play again in 2026 because of a knee injury. That absence does not hand Djokovic the year-end No. 1. It does remove the player who has been taking the biggest titles. A 39-year-old with a 34-0 record at one tournament is not a forecast. It is a description of what happened on Diamond Court.

The 21-season mark is the piece of the result that will outlast the week. A title in 2006 and a title in 2026, with no blank year between, is a span that covers the whole of the modern men's game since the mid-2000s. Beijing was the event that closed the latest year of it. The final itself was one set, a tie-break, and a retirement. The ledger does not record the manner. It records the trophy.