Murray made it 17 wins on the spin with his 6-1 6-4 victory in two hours and will become the first male to retain the Olympic crown should he repeat his success in the final.
Advertisement
After the travails of his previous two matches, Murray played consistent and controlled tennis throughout to dismiss the Japanese number one in just over 70 minutes.
Murray served aggressively and quickly closed out the match 6-1 6-4, never giving Nishikori a single chance to break back.
“Andy gave me a lot of pressure and my concentration just wasn’t there to beat him”, said the fourth seed. It’s obviously a hard thing to do hence why its not been done before.
In Sunday’s gold medal match, the 29-year-old Briton will face either Spain’s Rafael Nadal or Argentina’s Juan Martin del Potro. “If they do the order of play that way, scheduling me to play the second match (after the first men’s singles semi-final) from 12pm, obviously I’m in an even bigger disadvantage”, said Nadal.
Ranked 141st in the world after two years plagued by injury, Del Potro came back from a set down against Nadal to win the day, prevailing in a tense tie-break in the decisive third set.
He also won a silver in the mixed doubles with Laura Robson in London but was knocked out of the competition with Heather Watson at the quarter final stage this time. “I had some good points in the second set and I felt I was putting him under pressure, but I want to cut the unforced errors out tomorrow”. He pulled off an upset by defeating world number one Novak Djokovic in the first round in Rio.
Nadal tackles del Potro buoyed by his men’s doubles gold with Marc Lopez on Friday night. Nadal skipped the London Games due to a knee injury.
Later last night, in the women’s singles Olympic final, Monica Puig of Puerto Rico was to face off against Germany’s Angelique Kerber for gold.
To reach the final, Puig had already defeated two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova in the semifinal along the way. She was able to hit ground stroke winners from all over the court, often painting the lines, and leaving Kerber, the world’s No. 2 female player, struggling to effectively deploy her signature, punchy counter-attacking style of play.
He won his second Wimbledon – and third Grand Slam – title last month.
Advertisement
Nishikori will now have to regroup for the bronze medal match on Sunday. Safarova and Strycova had defeated three-time champions Serena and Venus Williams in the first round but were beaten by Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina in the semi-final.
