Murray Wears Out Raonic to Reach Australian Open Final

There were scowls, screams and many frustrating misses before Murray eventually wore down Raonic, who struggled with a leg injury in the latter stages of the match.

Milos Raonic of Canada rests on his racket during his semifinal match against Andy Murray of Britain at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. He needed a medical time out, and later in the fourth set had a massage from the trainer.

The telling moment was the first game of the deciding set, with Raonic hitting a glaring double fault on a Murray break point – something which fully highlighted the lack of movement in the Canadian’s serve.

The match has been going for almost 3 1/2 hours.

Raonic left the court for treatment for a right groin injury at 1-2 in the fourth set. Kim’s father, Nigel Sears, was in Melbourne as coach for Ana Ivanovic and had to be rushed to a hospital by ambulance during one of her matches on Rod Laver Arena, which happened to coincide with Murray’s third-round match on an adjacent arena.

The world number two, however, gradually picked up the Canadian’s booming serve and stayed strong on his own, conceding the break only once during the entire match.

“Great performance and fight from @andy_murray into 5th @AustralianOpen final!!” With his win over Federer, Djokovic now has a winning record against every member of the Big Four. Murray has produced 87 winners in his last two matches and 28 or less unforced errors in four of his six matches.

Djokovic has ruled the ATP World Tour over the past two years. I don’t think he’d ever won against him in 13 attempts.

“I started to get a slightly better read on his serve later on and that was the key”, he explained. “So now he comes back even stronger each time believing that he can do it. Yeah, he’s been in the last spot a few times and he’s really putting a lot of effort to try to get the trophy on Sunday”.

Williams was in similarly dominant form in her semi-final as she set up a date on Saturday with Germany’s Angelique Kerber, who reached her first grand slam final by ending Briton Johanna Konta’s fairytale run 7-5 6-2.

Milos Raonic broke Andy Murray’s serve at love in the opening game and went on to win the first set of their Australian Open semifinal 6-4 on Friday. I wasn’t allowing him to dictate as numerous points as I was at the beginning. He beat Roger Federer in four sets on Thursday.

Great players can come a cropper in certain tournaments at the final hurdle, Novak Djokovic has lost three French Open finals without winning at Roland Garros so far in his career.

On the current rankings, Europe has nine of the top 10 players – with Kei Nishikori of Japan breaking it up at No. 7. “People have asked ‘Do you think it will be a distraction?’ It might be but it’s a good distraction”, he said. “We’ve played a bunch of times here and hopefully this time it can be a different result”.

Jorge Paulo Lemann is the Brazilian businessman behind the venture.