BEIJING — At seat 14, row 12 of the Diamond Court, our observation began. The final of the China Open was to be decided by two men striking a ball over a net until one of them despaired. It was decided instead by a body. Alex de Minaur, the Australian number one, retired injured. The title passed to Novak Djokovic. No local within our hearing described this as unusual.
The withdrawal was conducted under full courtesy protocol. Across the farewell we logged four distinct apologies: one to the crowd, one to the opponent, one to the chair umpire, and one delivered with both arms to the building at large. De Minaur said he did not want the competition “to finish like this.” He thanked the fans. We registered the thanks twice — once in words, once with a hand pressed flat to the chest — which locals appear to file under the same sentence.
“We keep a script for a winner and a script for a loser,” said Gao Weiming, deputy ceremony director at the National Tennis Centre. “We performed a third. Staff assembled it in eleven minutes. The confetti does not know the difference.”
“Someone has to lift the cup,” said Chen Ruoxi, a spectator who had occupied seat 15 beside us since the warm-up. “It may as well be the one who is not broken. He was very sorry. We were very understanding. This is how it is done.”
Djokovic then received the trophy through the ordinary procedure, as though it had been won. He raised it. The applause that followed was, by our instruments, indistinguishable from the applause that had followed the apology. Around us, spectators wore the shirts of both men, each garment produced under local “fashion” to expire within a season, and each purchased, we were told, at the same counter within the same hour.
The tournament also maintains a human “waiting list” — the queue of the queue — for seats at future finals. Three of its members told us the injury had improved their position. Our closing tally: four apologies, two thank-yous, one trophy, one body entered as the decisive instrument. At position 9 in the exit queue, a boy asked his father who had won. “The one who could still stand,” said the father, and the queue advanced one place. We have found no record of the result being appealed.
