Jódar, 20, lost the first set again and won again. Ruud's defeat puts him ninth for Turin

By the Data Desk · Published 16 OCT 11:00 · Updated 19 OCT 07:30

For the fourth match in a row in Shanghai, Rafael Jódar lost the first set and won the match: 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 against Casper Ruud in two hours and 20 minutes. At 20, he is the youngest semi-finalist in the tournament's history, and the 200 extra points lift him to ninth in the Race to Turin, which, with Jannik Sinner out for the season, is a qualifying place as things stand.

• Ruud broke in the tenth game to take the first set; Jódar then broke him five times in the second and third sets (ATP).
• In the Live Race, Jódar moves from 11th on 2,709 points to ninth on 2,909, past Alex de Minaur (2,880) and Novak Djokovic (2,840).
• On Saturday he plays Daniil Medvedev or Tommy Paul for a place in the final.

The pattern is now hard to call a coincidence. Jódar lost the first set to Thiago Agustín Tirante, to Jiří Lehečka, to Botic van de Zandschulp and to Ruud, and won all four matches. Against Ruud the turn came at 4-4 in the second set: he broke for 5-4 and served the set out to love, then broke three times in the decider, the ATP reports. Ruud had not dropped a set all week before Friday.

The numbers around him have changed fast. This is Jódar's fifth tour-level semi-final of the season and his second at a Masters 1000 after Montreal, he is 42-16 on the ATP's win-loss index, and he is 10-2 against top-30 opponents since July. Spain will have two semi-finalists, because Alejandro Davidovich Fokina also reached the last four, the fifth time since 2014 that two Spaniards have done so at the same Masters 1000.

The Race explains why this quarter-final was worth more than a quarter-final. Before Friday Jódar was 11th, 171 points behind de Minaur. A place in the semi-finals is worth 400 points against 200 for a quarter-final, enough to take him to 2,909 and above both de Minaur and Djokovic, who lost in the second round here. The Grand Slam rule does not interfere this year, because all four majors went to players in the top three.

Nothing is settled yet: Medvedev is eighth on 3,220, and the next three weeks still carry points in Vienna, Basel and Paris. Our analysis of this match picked Jódar in three sets, as an analysis without a stake. What happens next: the Shanghai semi-final on Saturday, 17 October, against the winner of Medvedev v Paul.