Photo: Keith Allison via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped. This adapted image is also licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.

Hubert Hurkacz Wins the Shanghai Masters

The vegan Pole saves a championship point to beat Andrey Rublev for his second Masters 1000 title

Vegan tennis player Hubert Hurkacz has won the Shanghai Masters. The Pole beat Russia's Andrey Rublev 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (10-8) in Sunday's final, saving a championship point on the way, to claim the second ATP Masters 1000 title of his career, according to the tournament record.

Hurkacz, the 16th seed, took the first set before fifth seed Rublev hit back to level the match. The deciding set went all the way to a tie-break, and Rublev had his chance to win the title before Hurkacz held his nerve and edged it 10-8.

Shanghai is back on the calendar for the first time since 2019, and the draw grew from 56 players to 96 for this year's return, so even with a first-round bye as a seed Hurkacz had to win six matches to lift the trophy. On the way he ended the run of Zhang Zhizhen, the first Chinese man to reach the fourth round at the event. Hurkacz won his first Masters title in Miami in 2021, the first ever by a Polish player, as his career record shows.

For the past several years Hurkacz has followed a vegan diet, and he talked about it in an ATP Tour feature on what he eats. Like plenty of kids, he wasn't keen on greens to begin with:

when I was a kid, I didn't like salad at all and I didn't like most of the veggies

These days the 26-year-old is powering through draws on plants. The tournament ran from October 4 to October 15, and Hurkacz finished it as the last man standing.

We covered Hurkacz winning in Miami, beating Roger Federer at Wimbledon and winning in Halle. Last month plant-based Novak Djokovic won his 24th Grand Slam at 36, and in August Venus Williams knocked out a top-20 seed in Cincinnati.