Injury comebacks inspire as Fokina and Kartal defy the odds on tennis’s biggest stages

Given Spain’s strength in tennis and its nine previous all-Spanish Masters 1000 finals on clay, it is remarkable that Alejandro Davidovich Fokina and Rafa Jodar have beaten former champion Daniil Medvedev and world No 1 Alexander Zverev to set up the first all-Spanish final on a hard court.

Further remarkable is that the older and lower-ranked Fokina won, despite losing the first set 1-6 and being a breakdown in the second to his next-gen compatriot.

In analysing his unanticipated triumph, Fokina said: “I knew it’s not going to be easy for him either. He’s going to be nervous; maybe he’s going to make a couple of mistakes.”

Jodar certainly did, and he made them at critical moments, squandering eight out of 12 break points. “So I just needed to be there on every ball and to try to let him run, because he can start cramping.”

Again, it was painfully obvious 20-year-old Jodar was fading fast towards the end of the second set, calling for the physio.

Fokina stuck patiently to his game plan, forcing Jodar to run full circle for 2hr 30min until finally Jodar was shanghaied by leaking “petrol reserves”, and Fokina pounced 1-6 7-6(5) 6-4.

Interestingly, it wasn’t from a Spaniard Fokina drew his inspiration from, but French No 1 Arthur Fils, who incurred a lower back stress fracture during the 2025 French Open and was on his back for six months before making an impressive comeback in winning three back-to-back Masters in Barcelona, Cincinnati & Japan.

The Spaniard, who also suffered a back injury during this year’s US Open, sidelining him for two months, drew tremendous inspiration from Fils — “a very good friend” — and I thought to myself “if he can do it, then I can do it”.

Indeed, Fokina did emulate Fils, winning in Chengdu, his first post-operative event, at the start of the Asian Swing and riding momentum through to the climatic Shanghai final.

Someone else tapping into the Fils elixir was Britain’s Sonya Kartal, also making an historic comeback at the Wuhan Open in China after a six-month back problem.

At No 170, she became the lowest-ranked player to reach a WTA 1000 final at only her second event, post this lengthy layoff. Moreover, she had to fell a slew of elite opponents to get there, including Elina Svitolina and Jasmine Paolini.

Regardless of the fact that Kartal ultimately capitulated to Poland’s rising star Maja Chwalinska, her benchmark feat enabled her to grab Britain’s No 1 spot from Emma Raducanu.

Meanwhile, Fokina’s surprise victory has leapfrogged him to No 13 in the rankings, as well as cementing the necessary self-belief to break into the top 10.

The run has also brought Jodar closer to qualifying for the prestigious ATP Finals in Turin, where the season’s top eight singles players compete in a round-robin format before the semi-finals.

So far, only Major winners Zverev and Carlos Alcaraz with US Open finalist Ben Shelton have made the cut. There are five berths still going begging and the major contenders vying for these are Flávio Cobolli, Daniil Medvedev, Francis Tiafoe and Alex de Minaur.

The other big name missing from the Turin equation, apart from Jannik Sinner, is Novak Djokovic. The Serb tends to pick and choose his tournaments at age 40. Speculation is rife about his last-minute decision to accept a wild card for the Swiss Open in Basel, an event he hasn’t competed in since 2011.

It signals two possibilities: either Djokovic, currently at No 11, believes he can pick up sufficient points between this Masters 500 and the pending Paris Masters 1000 to skid into the ATP Finals. Or he has realised he cannot arrive cold at next year’s Australian Open, the closest he came to achieving that elusive 25th title he so desperately wants.

In other words, he needs more competitive match practice under his belt to maintain rhythm in his game. He intends to keep us guessing, but as we’ve seen at the Beijing Open, where he waltzed in after an absence of over a decade and won ... when Djokovic puts his every fibre into achieving a target, he usually comes up trumps.

Certainly he has outlasted most of his vintage of veterans in remaining on Tour, but more significantly in the top 10 on Tour. Former French No 1 Gael Monfils is finally surrendering his racket this month in Paris, and it’s sad to contemplate the fact that his career, while pre-empting Djokovic’s, has lasted four times longer than his marriage to Ukrainian world No 6, Elina Svitolina.

While the war in Ukraine is apparently a contributing factor to their divorce, the demands upon two tennis egos straining in polar opposite directions with a young daughter waiting for their respective returns is more likely the final straw.