Great Britain’s Murray underwent a gruelling four-hour semi-final against Canada’s Milos Raonic (4-6, 7-5, 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 5-2) on Friday and is playing his first competition of the year in Australia, where he has notched up six victories so far.
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Novak Djokovic will aim to clinch his 6th Australian Open and 11th overall singles major on Sunday, 31 January, when he takes on Scotland’s Andy Murray in the men’s singles final in Melbourne.
Novak Djokovic admits it’s impossible to ignore the high stakes at play as he sets himself for a fourth Australian Open final showdown with Andy Murray.
“I just tried to keep going, keep making as many returns as possible, and continue to make it hard for him”, Murray said.
Andy said: “For it to be the first time to happen, it is incredible really”.
“It’s about what happens on Sunday”.
Murray and Soares defeated the oldest team to reach a Grand Slam final in the Open era, Daniel Nestor and Radek Stepanek, 2-6, 6-4, 7-5 for the first major title in either of their careers. But his unforced error count over four hours hit 78, countered by 72 winners and just one break of Murray’s serve.
“(It was) probably the most heartbroken I felt on court, but that’s what it is”, said Raonic, who destroyed his racket after dropping serve to begin the fifth. Djokovic, who will match Rod Laver and Bjorn Borg with 11 Grand Slam titles if he wins Sunday’s final, leaving only four players ahead of him on the all-time list, said he meant to stay on top for as long as he can. “I’ll need to execute my game plan very well and not have any lapses in concentration and just play as good a match as I can. Of course I don’t underestimate him”, Djokovic said. “We’ve played a bunch of times here and hopefully this time it can be a different result”.
Djokovic has beaten Murray in the final three times here – and in the 2012 semi-final. That was sort of the whole frustration of everything sort of getting out.
“She’s been there with me for the last seven years, through a lot of good times but a lot of bad times as well”. Britain’s Jamie Murray gained an early claim to bragging rights over younger brother Andy when he combined with Brazil’s Bruno Soares to win the Australian Open men’s doubles title early on Sunday. She is bidding for a 22nd career Grand Slam title, which would match Steffi Graf for most all time.
After playing a remarkable tiebreaker to take a two-sets-to-one lead, Raonic was treated off court after the third game of the fourth set and then was broken at love at 3-3.
No brothers have ever reached the singles and doubles finals at a Grand Slam before. “There aren’t many tennis players who come out of Scotland”, Murray said.
Murray was on the back foot against the Canadian for much of the match, and had to bide his time for his chances.
The first and second ranked players in the world will meet in the climax of the tournament after the Scot saw off Milos Raonic in five sets on Friday.
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“People like to read into what’s happened in the past, but Stan Wawrinka beat Rafa Nadal in the 2015 final here and I don’t think he’d won against him in 13 attempts”.
