SHANGHAI :Valentin Vacherot said he surprised himself by how he managed his Shanghai Masters semi-final upset win over Novak Djokovic as the world number 204 beat the 24-times Grand Slam champion 6-3 6-4 to march into the final.

Vacherot, who arrived in Shanghai as an alternate and came through qualifiers, has experienced a meteoric rise in the last two weeks, brushing aside top seeds to become the lowest-ranked player to reach an ATP Masters 1000 final.

The 26-year-old, who said he had always wanted to play the "Big Three" of Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, acknowledged how surreal it felt to face the four-times champion in Shanghai.

"I missed Federer and Nadal in my career because I was (at) such a lower ranking and they stopped their career before I was a getting into the mix

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