Murray Crushed By Nadal In ATP Finals

It was Nadal’s third win over Murray in their last four matches, avenging his loss on the Madrid Masters clay earlier this season, and his first on the hard court against the Scotsman since 2011.

The left-hander has cut a disconsolate figure at times this year after failing to reach the semi-finals of a Grand Slam for the first time since 2004.

Nadal edged a tight first set and then raced clear in the second to win 6-4 6-1 at the O2 Arena in their second round-robin match at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals on Wednesday.

He said: “If it itches too much, I’ll take it off. If my girls can’t stand it, I’ll take it off. If I look in the mirror and I don’t like it, I’ll take it off. Maybe I’ll think of Santa and keep it. It’s around the corner”. I’m competing with everybody else equally for this trophy as any other trophy.

“Of course I would never say that”.

“It’s going to be interesting how I’m going to play Friday, if I’m going to bring the positive game that I start to play [against Ferrer], and also how he’s going to be”. Nadal responded strongly by breaking Murray in the very next game.

“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”.

On the prospect of playing Nadal for a 46th time, Djokovic said: “He has another match tomorrow and I will watch that with my team to try and prepare”.

Wawrinka was heavily criticised for his performance against Rafael Nadal on Monday but he recovered from 5-2 down in the opening set against David Ferrer to win 7-5 6-2.

Neither man was serving well but it was Murray who was paying the price, and successive double faults helped Nadal to a second straight break at the start of the second set.

Murray, who would seal the year-end world No 2 ranking with victory, has not played Wawrinka for more than two years.

Nadal hit 70 per cent of his backhands cross court to Murray’s passive forehand, which accumulated only three winners, while committing 12 unforced errors in this primary baseline pattern of play. “This year, I have been more anxious about myself than the opponents for a lot of matches”. But the fifth-seeded Nadal broke right back and went on to take the first set in 57 minutes. After losing at the French Open for only the second time in his career, Rafa has slowly built himself back up.