His first serve was misfiring for much of the first set and there were precious few of the cheap points that had seen him dismiss Gilles Simon and Tomas Berdych in previous rounds. Top-ranked Novak Djokovic played No. 6 Kei Nishikori in the other semifinal late Saturday.
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Nadal had his chances but failed on the decisive points, falling short in his attempt to win a third consecutive title this season.
“The first couple of break points I remember making two mistakes”, said Murray.
I felt like I was aggressive throughout.
Since he came back from paternity leave, Murray has been struggling to screw down his concentration from first ball until last.
“I don’t think it came down to luck today. I was able to make him worker harder in his service games”.
In the women’s final, Simona Halep of Romania defeated Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia 6-2, 6-4 to win her 12th career title and guarantee her return into the top-five rankings. However, Nadal would be the one to blink when serving to stay in the match in the next game, going down after two-hour and eleven minutes. Murray is clearly in good form with the French Open right around the corner, and a victory here would give him the confidence that he could win his first grand slam title since the 2013 Wimbledon.
In the second, however, the Scot’s serve began to click into gear and, having won just 17% of points on his second serve in the first set, he increased it to an impressive 60% in the second. Nadal also was looking to win a record 50th clay-court title in the Open era.
Andy Murray believes quelling Rafael Nadal’s increased intensity at the start of the second set was crucial to his brilliant semi-final victory at the Madrid Open on Saturday.
Djokovic has won five of the last six Masters titles, including three this year.
The Scot knocked out an in-form Rafael Nadal on his preferred clay surface en-route to the final and said he was feeling good moving around the court.
The next game, however, Nadal had two break points of his own to crawl back into the match against the No. 2 seed.
Nadal was off the pace and for spells was more 2015 than 2016 Nadal, but he still needed putting away and Murray, despite failing to serve out both sets, managed it pretty well in the end – he was certainly much the better on the big points than his adversary. Nadal pulled the scores back to 5-5, but Murray broke the Spaniard to love to take the set. Even when he dropped serve at the start of the third set, Murray kept at it: he attacked and he pushed and he tried everything to get back into the match.
Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic meet Sunday in the 2016 Mutua Madrid Open Final.
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But despite a courageous fightback in the second set, the world No. 1 powered to victory 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 to make him favourite to win the French Open for the first time.
