Andy Murray, from Britain, reaches to return a ball to Rafael Nadal, from Spain, during the semifinal Madrid Open tennis tournament match in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, May 7, 2016.
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In addition to beating home-crowd Nadal in straight sets in last year’s final, Murray had also won the Madrid tournament in 2008, when it wasn’t considered a Masters.
Nadal dominated the first set, with Sousa taking 37 minutes to win a game when he made it 1-1 in the second before a 10-minute rain delay as the roof was closed.
“The beginning of the second set in Monte Carlo, he came out and really raised his intensity, and I didn’t”, said Murray.
“It was kind of back and forth from there and unfortunately I couldn’t quite break, which was a shame because both of us on the break points until that last game were pretty clinical”.
Djokovic has defeated the world number two Scot, who will fall to number 3 in the rankings on Monday, in all four of their clay-court meetings. The set, and ultimately match, ended up in the tiebreaker, which was won by Djokovic 7-4 as he booked his spot in the final.
Granted the World No. 5 could convert only 2 out of the 13 break point opportunities that he got but that was more due to Murray’s stubborn resilience.
Nadal trailed again in the second set and got back on serve after saving a match point when Murray served for the match at 5-3, but it wasn’t enough after a poor final game on his own serve gave the Briton the win.
However, to do so he will have to avenge Murray’s only ever victory over the 14-time Grand Slam champion on clay in last year’s Madrid final.
It is supposed to be his weakest surface, but Murray is no slouch on clay – he has three French Open semifinals to his name, losing twice to Nadal in his prime and a year ago to Djokovic in five sets. “And knowing that I missed four match points I was very solid after that”.
“It was an open, competitive match which in the end was decided by a few points. It’s very hard to play against him, you are constantly under pressure”. The world number two surrendered a 5-2 lead, but responded perfectly by breaking the Nadal serve to love with a searing forehand return victor to take the set 7-5. However, Murray’s lone clay win against Nadal came in last year’s final match at Madrid.
Obviously when you play the best players they are going to create chances.
“I have total confidence that all my rivals are totally clean”, he said.
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While Murray won the second stanza he never looked comfortable against Djokovic and the outcome was a fair reflection of the match. However, Nadal battled back from match point down as Murray fired a forehand long to finally break the Scot’s serve on his ninth break point of the set.
