Murray ends year ranked No. 1

Andy Murray has beaten Novak Djokovic 6-3 6-4 to capture the ATP World Tour Finals title and secure the year-end world number-one ranking.

ANDY MURRAY has finally achieved world No.1 status – but how did he get there?

The defeat concludes a second half to the season during which the 29-year-old has failed to win a tournament – a period which Murray has taken full advantage of.

Novak Djokovic of Serbia serves to Andy Murray of Britain during their ATP World Tour Finals singles final tennis match at the O2 arena in London, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016. The pair were close enough in the rankings that it was a shootout to determine who was the best player on the planet. I’ll just give my best effort tomorrow. But now that I’ve got there, I obviously would be motivated to try and stay in that position.

“There are a lot of great champions here watching and Novak and I are very lucky to have two of them in our boxes”.

This one was particularly galling as he frequently outplayed the world number one and had a match point in the final-set tiebreak before bowing out after three hours 38 minutes of toe-to-toe combat against the home favourite.

At the start of the second set, Murray dumped an easy forehand into the net to hand Raonic a 2-0 lead, and the Scot’s odds suddenly grew longer.

The former No. 1 did, however, look to scrape back with a double break back against Murray in the second set, but as he admitted later in the post-match presentation, “it was a little too late”.

Murray went into the match having played over three hours more than Djokovic during the course of the week, but in the end it was his big-match sharpness that prevailed.

“The end of the match was exciting and dramatic, but there were mistakes from both of us”.

And the momentum didn’t stop there, the backhand slice proving its worth with yet another break from the first game of the second set.

Landing the No. 1 ranking in the winner-take-all affair against Djokovic made it feel like a big occasion for Murray.

But the Canadian fourth seed couldn’t take the one match point that came his way in a thrilling denouement that eventually went Murray’s way to repeat the outcome of their meetings in the Wimbledon and Queen’s finals on the other side of London earlier this year. These last four or five months, I haven’t lost any matches.

With a host of film, music and sporting celebrities watching from the stands Murray continued to pile the pressure on his 12-time grand slam winning opponent.