Stan Wawrinka, seeded 4th, kept his semi-final hopes alive on Wednesday in London, downing No. 7 David Ferrer in intense action at The O2 that ended 7-5, 6-2.
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Taking advantage of it all was the Spaniard, who ended up with a 6-4, 6-1 win on Wednesday to record his second straight victory at the season-ending finals.
Wawrinka broke serve for a third straight time in the opening game of the second set and quickly pulled away – winning seven consecutive matches.
Murray hit 62 per cent forehands from the back of the court, and hit 74 per cent of them cross court, but the victor to error ratio played out much more in the Nadal’s favor.
“Like I said, from the middle till the end of the second set he played extremely well”.
Murray said: “He obviously played better today than he did when I played him earlier in the year …”
“I served an extremely low percentage of first serves, at 43%, that may be my lowest percentage this year”.
Eventually Murray cracked when serving to stay in the set.
The world number five Nadal is now in pole position to reach the last four of the tournament since he has won both of his two games so far. Nadal responded strongly by breaking Murray in the very next game.
“I’m trying to win every match that I play”. “Happy for that. I just want to try to keep working the same way to keep confirming that I am in the completely right direction”.
Swiss star Wawrinka showed fighting spirit as he rallied to beat Ferrer 7-5 6-2 in London.
Nadal was superb in the next game as a couple of good returns including a flawless backhand left him at 0-30, it was soon triple set point Nadal when Murray could do nothing about another return from the Spaniard and Nadal took the set after Murray was forced from side to side and Nadal finished off the set in style to take it 6-4.
Andy Murray has managed to get himself a reputation for being incredibly miserable and a little bit boring, but also a machine on the court.
He’s having an awesome year, No2 in the world, so risky indoors, especially at home.
“When I don’t think about how to hit the ball, but when I think just about where to hit the ball, that’s good news”.
History looked to be repeating itself in the decider but this time Federer stopped the rot and buried a smash on his first match point to make it 51 wins in 14 appearances at the tournament.
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33-year-old David Ferrer, despite another consistent year, doesn’t quite have that mental or physical edge when it comes to the biggest players on the biggest stages, and legend Rafael Nadal’s season of woes has had doubters gathering around him for months.
