Former world number one Rafael Nadal continued his revival with a convincing straight sets win over second-ranked Andy Murray at the 2015 ATP World Tour Finals in London. In contrast, Murray’s poor first serve percentage of 43 and Nadal’s fine returning combined to work against the player who will lead Britain into next week’s Davis Cup final.
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“I think he was hitting the ball extremely well today from the back of the court”, Murray told reporters.
“Like I said, from the middle till the end of the second set he played extremely well”.
“He obviously played better than he did when I played him earlier in the year”, Murray said on Wednesday.
“The couple of matches, first couple of matches he played here against [Stan] Wawrinka and Murray showed that, showed that he feels more confident, shows that he’s starting to miss less, serve efficiently, use his forehand much better”.
Wawrinka then motored through a second set in which he hit 19 winners to two from Ferrer.
Both Nadal and two-time Grand Slam champion Murray are contesting their seventh Finals, the season-ending tournament disputed on a hard court between the year’s top eight players.
“The tactic against Murray is to play very well”.
Nadal slipped past Murray in the closely fought first set before dominating the second to win it 6-4 6-1.
World number four Wawrinka offered precious little resistance after that and his unforced error count climbed to 35 as Nadal raced to victory.
Roger Federer, who was the first singles player to qualify, takes on Kei Nishikori in the afternoon match on Thursday while Novak Djokovic will look to bounce back from his loss to Federer and book his place in the semi-finals with victory over Tomas Berdych in the evening. He wasted no time in cutting it, saying it only took him two seconds to get it done.
Murray himself called Nadal a favorite for the title – and next year’s majors.
Murray amazingly only won one of 10 second serves in the second set, and a lowly 34% for the entire match.
Ahead of their meeting in London, the Swiss – who helped his nation win the Davis Cup past year – believes that Murray’s focus may be elsewhere at this moment in time.
The match started at a furious pace, with Murray immediately breaking Nadal’s serve in the opening game before the Spaniard returned the favour.
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But with the Spaniard serving for the opening set at 5-3, an ill-timed double fault brought the match back on serve.
