The world number one, who came into the competition on the back of a French Open final defeat last month, with no warm-up tournament in between, bounced back from his disappointments at Roland Garros with a 7-6(1) 6-7(10) 6-4 6-3 win in just shy of three hours
Browsing: Novak Djokovic
ATP top 10 as of May 4 (previous ranking in parenthesis): 1. (1) Novak Djokovic, Serbia, 13,845 points 2. (2) Roger Federer, Switzerland, 8,635 3. (3) Andy Murray, Britain, 6,120 4. (4) Rafael Nadal, Spain, 5,390 5. (5) Kei Nishikori, Japan, 5,280 6. (6) Milos Raonic, Canada, 5,070 7. (7) Tomas Berdych, Czech Republic, 4,960 8. (8) David Ferrer, Spain, 4,490 9. (9) Stanislas Wawrinka, Switzerland, 3,495 10.(10) Marin Cilic, Croatia, 3,405
The victory followed Djokovic’s triumphs at the Australian Open and Indian Wells and was the Serb’s fifth title at Miami
But the top seed gallantly played on and even snatched the third set as Wawrinka – contesting his first-ever major final – struggled to cope with the bizarre situation
Wawrinka didn’t lose serve and only had one break point against him as big-serving Berdych dished up seven double faults, four of them, crucially, in the third and fourth set tiebreakers
A day after Nadal made sure of wresting the No. 1 ranking away from Djokovic, the Serb gained some consolation by beating his big rival 6-3, 6-4 on Sunday to claim his fourth China Open title in five years
Nadal advanced 4-2 into the title match in the capital as opponent, Tomas Berdych, retired with back pains
Murray and Djokovic played each other in a Grand Slam final for the third time in the last four majors, with Murray winning the US Open and Djokovic taking this year’s Australian Open