Murray tops Raonic in thrilling semi-finals

A huge serve from Murray got him out of trouble when Wawrinka finally got his first break point in the next game.

Milon Raonic became the first Canadian to qualify for the semifinals of the ATP World Tour Finals with a 7-6 (7-5) 6-3 victory over Dominic Thiem of Austria here Thursday evening. “I’ve got a big match obviously against Milos now, a tough one”.

“I feel like my game’s in a good place”. When the ball was there to be attacked I did it.

Two more wins here would deliver his maiden ATP World Tour Finals title and the year-end number one ranking for the first time.

John McEnroe has backed Novak Djokovic to beat Andy Murray in the showdown for the world No 1 spot this weekend. After his 3hr 38min victory over Milos Raonic, Murray was barely able to drag himself off court. This week I’ve played a lot of long matches.

“Thankfully today’s match was quick”.

In Friday’s late match, Nishikori will play Marin Cilic, but the result won’t affect the semifinals. Definitely would have had an impact on the next day’s match. His frustration was understandable however, with Djokovic absolutely faultless as he strolled to one of his most dominating wins of the year to set-up the ideal climax to the campaign against Murray.

The group stage will conclude when Nishikori takes on Marin Cilic in Friday’s evening session at 20:00 GMT, but the Croat can not overhaul the fifth seed to qualify. Now its coming up to the last match of the year, the match everybody anticipated.”.

But despite the complex qualification permutations, Murray didn’t once take his foot off the gas.

After claiming a tense point at 0-15, Murray was nearly flawless and made sure the first box in the contest was ticked.

He then repeated the feat after again surrendering the initiative to Murray to set up a second-straight shoot-out. “I came up short on that”, said Raonic.

Wawrinka may have caught the eye, hitting 29 winners to 15, but Murray won the points that mattered and made just 13 unforced errors to 27. “But once I got through the early part of the match, I started to create chances in most of his service games”.

At 3-0 and two breaks down, Wawrinka broke his racket clean in half in frustration, adding a fine to his troubles.

But, not only did Raonic break back, he then did it again the second time Murray served for the match.

The Scot said: “The first set was tight, there weren’t many chances either way”.

Nishikori was unable to avenge his defeat to Cilic in the final of the Swiss Indoors in Basel last month, but he said his performance was not affected by knowing he had already qualified for the next round. I just did everything I could, everything that was within me, at least to really try to win.