Dubai Open: Murray downs Pouille to reach final

Murray fell down early breaks in the first round against Malek Jaziri, the semifinals against Lucas Pouille and again in Saturday’s final to Fernando Verdasco, but ultimately won all three matches in straight matches, culminating in a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Verdasco.

This win comes at the right time, as he heads to America for the Masters series in exceptional form. He held, but he would get only one more game as Murray produced flashes of brilliance in his pick-ups and added to the pressure with some fine serving.

US Open champion Stan Wawrinka also suffered a shock first-round loss in Dubai to Samir Dzumhur, while French Open champion Novak Djokovic was knocked out of the quarter-finals of the Mexico Open by Nick Kyrgios.

Do you ever have any question about anything you wish to ask and get answer? I think potentially the match yesterday had something to do with that – sometimes if your legs are a little bit exhausted, the serve is one of the first things that goes.

“I played a good match today”, Murray said.

Murray reeled off 11 of the final 13 games outclassing the Spaniard for the 13th time in 14 meetings to capture his first career Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships title. The numero uno though does not want to take his opponent lightly and reportedly acknowledged his opponent’s good run in the ongoing tournament.

Murray becomes the tournament’s first British victor in its 25-year history and was pleased with his display.

The Spaniard said: “I’ll just try to recover and be as ready as possible”. “At the same time, I didn’t really feel, of course, as comfortable or hitting the ball as clean as days before”. Maybe the last couple of matches, I didn’t start as well as I would like. Miami will follow before the clay-court events dominate the tour.

According to the ATP World Tour website, there are no Emirati players listed in the official rankings.

With no end to the tie-break in sight, Murray, Kohlschreiber and the umpire were left confused as the players forgot to change ends when they were locked at 15-15.