Murray counts cost of high error count in London

It was an utterly listless display against Nadal in his opening match but he managed to turn it around magnificently.

A year after Mirka Federer called Stan Wawrinka “a crybaby” while he was blowing three match points against her husband, Roger, in the semi-finals of the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, the Swiss are hurled back into another encounter to decide who goes through to 2015 final.

He did not face a single break point and will play either Roger Federer or Stan Wawrinka in the final on Sunday.

Andy Murray can hold his head high after his performance at the ATP World Tour Finals, according to former British number one Andrew Castle.

Great Britain have not won the Davis Cup for 79 years but – largely thanks to Murray’s superlative year – are the favourites to beat Belgium on their home turf in the final and end the long wait.

“I going to try to play my game”.

“If I am able to keep playing like this I think next year can be a positive year for me”.

“I’m going to have a couple of days off after here, then I have a charity event for my foundation”.

However, he has beaten Rafa three times in a row now and the last time Rafa beat him on hardcourts was back in 2013 at the US Open final. The racket which he smashed on the court shortly after failing to capitalise on a break point as Wawrinka served for the match was testament to his desire to win. “This year I have been more anxious about myself than the opponents for a lot of matches”, he said.

Forced to stave off two break points in the third game, Wawrinka weathered Murray’s early storm and overpowered him with a few ferocious groundstrokes to secure the first break in the eighth game.

Even in that heavy defeat in NY, Wawrinka was only out-aced 10-6 and that was again with a poor first serve mark of under 50 percent.

The result also served as a blow to the Scots’ bid to end the year as the world number two. But after earning the first mini-break, the Briton made a number of errors to hand the momentum back to Wawrinka.

In their place, arena staff members occupied two seats in an otherwise empty box.

“With my team sitting behind, I just felt like sometimes when the box is extremely close to the court, I sometimes can find that a distraction”, Murray explained. So I thought it would be better to have them sit a bit further away from the court. However, the contest will be taking place on a surface that is Nadal’s least favored and one that Djokovic has been utterly dominant on.

But as Friday segues into Saturday, the semi-final line-up promises much more riveting matches. “A really hard match against a player who is playing just better, impossible I believe”. The third seed has played this year-end tournament 14 times and only failed to make the semifinals one time. “I won a very tough match”, said Nadal.

The same could be said of Wawrinka, who faced accusations of tanking against Nadal but recovered from a poor start to see off Ferrer.