Novak Djokovic of Serbia celebrates his 6-2, 6-4 triumph over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France in the final of the Shanghai Masters yesterday. (Reuters)

AFP/Shanghai

Novak Djokovic handed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga a 6-2, 6-4 beating yesterday as the world number one claimed his third Shanghai Masters title to brutally strengthen his rule over men’s tennis.
The one-sided victory at the Qi Zhong Stadium gave Serbia’s Djokovic his ninth trophy of a season in which he also won three out of four Grand Slam finals.
Djokovic’s serve was broken once but he broke the floundering Tsonga four times, collecting his 10th title in China on the back of a 17-match winning streak including 22 straight sets.
Djokovic was similarly dominant over Andy Murray in the semis and has looked untouchable in both Shanghai and Beijing, where he beat Rafael Nadal to win his sixth China Open last week.
The win was his 25th Masters 1000 honour, leaving him just two shy of all-time leader Nadal. The world number one Serb capped a record-smashing run in China where he reigns as a demi-god in the sport. The Serb now owns 10 titles in the country, including six in Beijing and one at the 2008 season-ending Masters Cup.
Djokovic improved to 14-6 over Tsonga, who is fighting on provisional ninth for a spot in the eight-man field at the year-end event next month in London.
Djokovic completed the autumn Beijing-Shanghai trophy double for the third time in his career (2012, 2014, 2015) with a 68-minute rout of the Frenchman who will stand 10th in the ranking on Monday. “Bad luck today, but I hope you make the Masters in London and finish the season the way you want,” Djokovic told Tsonga after the win.
Top-ranked Djokovic now expands his rankings points tally to 16,785, nearly double the 8,750 of second-placed Murray, and will finish world number one for the fourth time in five years.
Tsonga could only shake his head in admiration at the “really impressive” Serb after hardly managing to get a foothold in what was his second final of the year.
“Today there is nothing to say. He’s playing a lot better than everybody, I think. He’s really consistent,” said the Frenchman.
“You have to be in your best shape to beat him anyway, and everybody knows that it’s not easy to play your best tennis every match. Yeah, I think his level is just better than everybody for the moment.”
After a rock-star welcome complete with dry ice and ear-splitting music, Tsonga was quickly in trouble and he nervously netted on break points in the first and third games to go 3-0 down.
Some rare Djokovic errors gave Tsonga a break of his own but he immediately handed back the initiative to the Serb, who calmly served out to love for 6-2 and a one-set lead.
Tsonga hammered his second ace of the afternoon to get off the mark in the second set, and then two service winners and two more aces helped him neutralise a break point and go 2-1 ahead.
Djokovic held his first three service games to love, ramping up pressure on the Frenchman, but Tsonga held firm and he unleashed a crunching forehand to stay in front 4-3. The Frenchman stared down five break points in the second set but on the sixth, he finally cracked with a double fault to put Djokovic 5-4 ahead and serving for the match.
The Serb did not need asking twice, grabbing the first match point when Tsonga put a lob long, and then soaking up the acclaim from the below-capacity, early evening crowd.

How to beat Djokovic? Even he doesn’t know
It’s the big question in men’s tennis: How do you beat Novak Djokovic? And the unhelpful answer is, even he doesn’t know.
When asked what he would do if he were trying to beat himself, the newly crowned Shanghai Masters champion just smiled and shook his head. “It’s a good question but I have no answer,” grinned the Serb.
Whether he is unaware of any flaws, or is just unwilling to give his rivals any pointers, was not completely clear. Certainly Jo-Wilfried Tsonga didn’t have the answer as Djokovic swept to a 6-2, 6-4 victory in Shanghai to lift his ninth trophy of the year.
No shame in that: Djokovic trounced Andy Murray 6-1, 6-3 in the semi-finals, and a week ago he cruised past Rafael Nadal to stay unbeaten in six appearances at the China Open in Beijing.
“I think I’ve played the best tennis ever in these two weeks in terms of back-to-back. Honestly, that’s how I felt,” said Djokovic.
“Energy-wise, I was great. I didn’t get tired. I always had plenty of intensity, concentration, high performance level from the first match in Beijing to today’s match,” he added.
Djokovic says he is already enjoying the best season of his career—better even than his phenomenal 2011, when he won 10 trophies including three Grand Slams and had a win-loss record of 70-6.
This year, after getting married and becoming a father, he has contested all four Slam finals, won three of them, and has nine titles and a 73-5 record with two tournaments still to go.
Worryingly for everyone else, he’s still getting better—and he wants to stay in this form for “many more years” to come.
“It’s the best year of my life. No question about it. Everything is working great. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to be able to play this well, to be successful,” he said.
“I don’t want to get carried away by success, obviously, because I want to be playing on this level for many more years to come.
“I know that one of the things that you have to do in order to keep playing on a high level is stay committed and stay determined about this lifestyle. That is obviously not easy, travelling all the time.
“Now that I’m a father, that makes it a little bit more difficult. I have the support of the close ones, my wife, the most important one, but my brothers, my team. Everybody is behind me on the quest of being the best I can be.”