Djokovic takes a seventh Beijing title after de Minaur stops at 0-1

Novak Djokovic won a seventh China Open title in Beijing on Tuesday after Alex de Minaur retired with a groin injury, the score standing at 7-6(3), 0-1.

De Minaur, 27 and seeded fifth, left the court for a medical timeout after losing the first-set tie-break and came back with his left thigh heavily bandaged. He held the first game of the second set, then stopped. Both players had asked for treatment after the opening set. Djokovic, 39, told him he was sorry the final had ended that way and hoped the recovery would be quick. De Minaur told the crowd he did not want to finish like that.

The title extends Djokovic's record at the event to 34 wins and no losses. It is his 102nd ATP singles title, one behind Roger Federer. Jimmy Connors leads the Open era with 109. It is also a title in a 21st straight year. He had not played Beijing since he won the event in 2015.

The week that produced the trophy was uneven before the final. In the quarter-finals Djokovic beat Alexander Zverev, the US Open champion, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 in 2 hours 35 minutes. In the semi-final he was leading Daniil Medvedev 7-5, 5-3, and serving at 15-15, when Medvedev was defaulted. A ball off the Russian's racket hit a spectator. Medvedev said afterwards that it was an accident and that he wanted to apologise to the fan in person. The other semi-final also ended early: Hubert Hurkacz retired against de Minaur with an adductor strain at 6-4, 3-2.

So the champion beat one top-ten player in a full match, advanced when another was defaulted, and took the title when a third could not continue. He told the court he still pictures himself with the trophy in Beijing, a place he has never lost, and that he knows the day-to-day level is different now. The 34-0 record is the fact that does not depend on that caveat. He has not lost a match at this tournament.

The 102nd title is the other number that sits outside the week. Federer stopped at 103. Connors holds the Open-era mark at 109. Djokovic is one win from the man he spent a decade beside at the top of the game, and seven from the Open-era record. A retired final still counts as a title. It does not count as a completed contest. The record books will list Beijing 2026 as his seventh China Open and his 102nd trophy. They will also list the score as unfinished.

De Minaur's injury was visible. He played the end of the first set and the first game of the second with the thigh strapped, then stopped. He is 27, fifth seed, and had reached the final by surviving his own truncated semi-final. A groin strain at that point in a final usually ends the match, and it did. Djokovic's line to him at the ceremony was an apology for the manner of the ending, not a claim about the level of the tennis in the first set. That set had gone to a tie-break, 7-6(3), after de Minaur had a break point in the fifth game that Djokovic saved with a stretched backhand down the line.

The return to Beijing after 11 years is its own fact. He won here in 2015 and did not come back until this week. The 34-match unbeaten run includes the years he skipped. A player can keep a perfect record at an event by winning when he enters and staying away when he does not. This week he entered, at 39, and won. The next test of the record is the next time he enters.

He beat three top-ten players in one event for the first time in three years, if a default and a retirement are counted as wins, which the draw counts them as. Zverev was the completed one. Medvedev and de Minaur were not. The trophy is real. The path to it was shorter than a full week of finals tennis.