Coric continued his career-best year as he reached the final at the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event, surpassing Swiss legend Federer to do so.

The match lasted an hour and 13 minutes as Coric forced seven break points from Federer.

Unable to defend them all, Federer conceded five breaks of serve to hand the match 6-4, 6-4 to the young Croat.

The 21-year-old was playing in only his second ATP World Tour Masters 1000 semi-final and reaches the final for the first time in his career.

He will play second seed Djokovic who eased past Alexander Zverev.

The Serbian needed less than an hour to dispatch Germany's Zverev in the Serbian's 1000th ATP Tour level match.

With six break points, Djokovic converted four of them to win 6-2, 6-1.

Double faults at crucial points in the match led Zverev down the path of defeat and the world number five only won 36 per cent of the total points.

Following the victory, Djokovic is guaranteed to surpass Federer as the world number two, whatever the outcome of the final.

If the three-time champion can make it four wins at the Shanghai Masters, he will move to within 35 points of the world number one, Rafael Nadal of Spain.

"Being number two after this tournament is also a great achievement, considering the first four or five months of the year and considering I had the surgery," Djokovic said.

"Where I was about four months ago and where I am today is quite an extreme opposite.

"I'm just cherishing that achievement and every moment spent on the court.

"Obviously I worked hard for it, and my ultimate goal is to get to number one by the end of the year."

Coric has never beaten Djokovic in two career meetings and like today's opponent Zverev is a decade younger than the Serb.

With Djokovic set to become world number two, Coric is currently 17 places below him on the world ranking list.

Monday's (October 15) new world ranking list will also put Coric up to number 13, whatever this weekend's result.