The seventh seed netted a forehand to give up the break, and then another double fault handed Wawrinka a second successive break, which he converted into the set. After winning at least one Grand Slam title in each of the last 10 years, 2015 has been a fallow period for Nadal.
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Strangely, Murray had not played Nadal on a hard-court since 2011, and only four times in all in the last four years. But is just the beginning. “I’m very happy and working hard to play these matches”.
“When I hit the ball and I know the ball will go in, when I don’t think about how to hit the ball, when I think just about where to hit it, that’s good news. I just try my best in every single match”. “I feel (enjoyment) on court”. It was the sort of sequence that you might be able to recover from against a lesser player, but Nadal has found his mojo at this event after a patchy year, and is competing with his old relentlessness.
“He’s come back from tight situations which is signs he is getting back to where he wants to be”.
Stan Wawrinka showed his fighting spirit to set up a winner-takes-all clash with Andy Murray for a place in the semi-finals at the ATP World Tour Finals. Neither has ever won the competition.
Taking a pair of scissors from his bag, Andy pulled at his fringe before chopping a good lump off the front and brushing the remaining hair from his forehead. All very odd. It was explained as “I had a few hair in my eye and I wanted to get rid of it”.
Nadal expressed surprise at Murray’s DIY trim, saying he would have expected the Scot to have been aware of the stray hairs in practice.
The first set started with Ferrer racing out the blocks as the Spaniard raced ahead to a 4-1 lead with a break. Nadal broke to love, sending the Briton chasing about swiping at fresh air. A poor Murray second serve made it easy for Nadal and he broke serve again to leave him serving for the match.
Murray was being watched by Davis Cup captain Leon Smith, back from a trip to South America with James Ward and Kyle Edmund, and he will hope his star man is in much better form next weekend. But Murray was far from his best, struggling with a low first serve percentage and high error count. “That s not good enough against someone as good as Rafa”.
The result means Murray is likely to need to win his final group match against Stan Wawrinka tomorrow to progress to the semi-finals, while he still requires one more victory to guarantee that he will finish the year ranked number two. Novak Djokovic, Kei Nishikori and Tomas Berdych can join them on day five.
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Unsettled by conceding the opener – and perhaps distracted, if only slightly, by Great Britain’s upcoming Davis Cup final against Belgium that starts November 27 – Murray wilted in the second.
