Andy Murray will face Tomas Berdych in the semi-finals of the Qatar Open after scraping past Nicolas Almagro 7-6 (7/4) 7-5.
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“I had a break point at 3-2”.
The title was Djokovic’s 67th of his career.
Boris Becker was crowned the inaugural Qatar Open champion and the honour roll since then has featured one tennis legend after the other.
From looking like the wheels had come off, Murray was now looking like he was riding the waves. Djokovic had a brief timeout at 30-30 on his serve in the next game to deal with a cut on his thumb. The Briton pounced to break serve – a feat he has now achieved in an impressive 112 successive matches.
“It is something that definitely can serve as a positive incentive for what’s coming up in Australia”.
The top-ranked Murray has lost all 20 matches he’s played against Djokovic when he’s lost the first set.
Murray then closed out the set 7-5 to force a third and decisive set between the top-two tennis players in the world. “He played great, great tennis, he was winning large parts of the match”.
The world No. 1 won the match, 7-6 (4), 7-5, and may have a special warmup partner to thank for his strong performance.
Andy Murray advanced to the finals this week fairly easily.
From there on the match went a distance. It was very windy so it was tough to get into much of a rhythm.
The Spanish world No 42 took a 2-0 lead in the second before Djokovic broke back to level the 4-all. On his first championship point, Djokovic narrowly missed a backhand down the line.
The end of his winning streak will be less of a concern to Murray than the fact he was beaten by Djokovic – who appears to be nicely back on track. Still, his quick thinking earned him a lot of credit for his incredibly fast reflexes.
Murray remains as the world number one despite the loss at the hands of the man he replaced at the top of the rankings.
Only after closing the tense second set tie-breaker, did Djokovic’s victory seem likely.
Murray fought extremely hard to hold in the next game and in the end, was gifted the hold with a point penalty as Djokovic smashed his racket in frustration.
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It turned out to be an effective tactic, but Murray was up to the task when returning the favour and led 2-1 after three games. I think I had the first break point in the first set as well, didn’t get it.
