Murray beats Wawrinka, advances to semifinals at ATP finals

“Why would you rush when you’ve had 14 hours to get ready?” he shouted.

The 6-4 6-2 victory sees Murray avoid Novak Djokovic in the knock-out stage, where he will face world number five Raonic at 2pm GMT on Saturday [19 November] who he has beaten eight times in their 11 meetings including in the Wimbledon final.

Raonic beat first-time qualifier Dominic Thiem of Austria 7-6 (5), 6-3 to improve to a 2-1 record in round-robin play.

“For sure he’s playing more than well enough to win it here”, said Wawrinka of an opponent he conceded was far superior on the day. When the ball was there to be attacked I did it.

“There’s a good chance that, if I want to win the tournament, I would have to win against Novak”.

Briton Murray and Brazilian Soares are top of the Edberg/Jarryd Group and provisionally leapfrogged Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert in the world rankings.

But first up for Murray is Milos Raonic, in a repeat of the Wimbledon final.

Raonic was pleased to have the seven-time grand slam champion back with his coaching team and revealed words of advice have helped his progression at the O2 Arena. “I think it’s going to be a really interesting weekend with some really good match tomorrow, semifinal, and hopefully awesome final”. But I’ve done well to give myself this opportunity.

Qualification from the John McEnroe group is up for grabs on Friday at the World Tour Finals, with three players vying for the two places on offer in the semi finals.

Murray nearly broke again as he brilliantly engineered three set points but he shrugged off Wawrinka’s resistance and served out a high calibre set of tennis in 39 minutes, leaking just five unforced errors along the way.

Like the Greenwich Meridian which bisects the O2 arena, Murray’s 21st consecutive singles win, a gruelling 3hr 20min war of attrition against Kei Nishikori, could have gone either way.

It was his first win in six matches at the tournament and the 200 ranking points he earned means he will move above Gael Monfils to a career-high six. The Austrian failed to reach break point in the match. Murray leads Wawrinka 9-7 but Stan beat Murray a year ago in this same situation, though the Scot had the Davis Cup around the corner. It’s a little bit quicker. “Stan came out hitting a lot of winners, a lot of aces”.

Nishikori’s unforced error count continued to rise and Cilic took advantage to earn a break point and convert it with a rasping backhand victor down the line in the fifth game of the decider.

Murray raced through the second set with service breaks in the first and third games, which preceded Wawrinka smashing two rackets one right after the other.

While the pair can never quite hope to match the fan euphoria generated by Federer and Nadal, Murray remains convinced that a nail-biting finish to the week is approaching.

But I think it’s fair, correct and respectful towards the player and to the game if you go over the first time, let’s say, over the limit, that you at least get a heads up.

It did him no harm on court, though, with Djokovic quickly wrapping up the first set and forging ahead in the second. “In the second set I knew I’d already qualified, so it was easier for me to play freely”.