Medvedev Was Defaulted From the China Open Semifinal After His Ball Struck a Spectator

Semifinals at big tournaments end with a handshake at the net. The China Open's men's semifinal ended with a rules conversation instead. During the match against Novak Djokovic in Beijing, Daniil Medvedev hit a ball away in anger; it flew toward the stands and struck a spectator in the eye. Play stopped, and under tennis's default rule the match was awarded to his opponent then and there.

The default is the sport's harshest on-court sanction. Unlike a warning or even a point penalty, it cannot be played out: when a player's actions injure or endanger someone, the match ends immediately, whatever the score. Chinese posts carrying the moment asked, above all, that the spectator be all right — his condition was not immediately known.

Djokovic, the winner, was asked about it afterward. 'I was a bit shocked,' he said. 'I feel for the spectator — I hope he wasn't hurt. I also feel for Daniel, because I know exactly what it feels like to be defaulted during a match like this. I went through it at the 2020 US Open. Today I was three points from victory — it was an incredible battle.'

The parallel he reached for is tennis's most famous default: at the 2020 US Open, Djokovic accidentally struck a line judge with a ball and was disqualified from a Grand Slam he was expected to win. Six years on, he found himself on the other side of the same rule in Beijing — and on Zhihu, where the incident sat atop the Q&A site's trending board, the question was how one moment of temper could erase a semifinal.

Djokovic then beat Alex de Minaur for a record seventh China Open title, extending his Beijing record to 34 wins and no losses. The record will log Medvedev's exit as a straight-sets defeat. What it will not log is the point that was never played — or the person in the stands the semifinal was stopped for.