ATP World Tour Finals IT’S ROAR EMOTION
TENNIS An epic win f or Murray
THE roar could be heard all the way to Dunblane. Andy Murray was into the final of the ATP World Tour Finals and 17,000 fans went crazy.
The roof on London’s O2 Arena was almost ripped from its moorings when Milos Raonic ( right) dumped one last,ast, exhausted, forehand into o t he net t o end a rollercoaster of a semifinal which lasted three hours and 38 minutes and give victory to Murray 5-7 7-6 7-6.
It was the longestst t hree- s et match t he tournament has ever seen and it was the longest three-set match played anywhere on the tour, on any surface, this year. And Murray won it. Just.
Twice he served for the match and twice he was broken. Three times he held match point in the third set tie-break and three times Raonic snatched it away from him. And then Raonic made a final error and the place went wild. Murray said: “It was an amazing atmosphere. The longer the match went on, the louder and better the crowd got. “I had to fight very, very hard. It was tough going into the tie-break having been broken twice serving for the match. I was just lucky I got t hat break at t he end of it it.” Until that moment, no o one had any idea how the result would turn out. Both men had given their all. The outcome came do down to a single shot – Ra Raonic missed it and Murra Murray was the winner. Murray said: “It’s tough to say right now where this match rates in my career. “It was one of the harder matches I’ve played indoors. They are never normally this long – it was more than three-and-a-half hours – and you don’t expect that, especially against someone with a serve like Milos. But we had so many long games, long points – it was really, really tough.”
On Wednesday Murray took three hours and 20 minutes to beat Kei Nishikori and now he has taken even longer to beat the big Canadian with the terrifying serve.
He has no idea how much he has left in the tank for today’s final, but at least he knows that this is the last big push of the year.
If he can win today, he is sure of the year-end world No.1 ranking. He may hurt, he may ache – but he has everything to play for.
He said: “Obviously I’m tired. I’ve played so much tennis the last few months. This week I’ve played a lot of long matches.
“I’ll just give it my best effort. It’s going to be obviously tough, but I’ll give it my best shot.”
But it was not all rejoicing in the Murray family last night.
Andy’s brother Jamie and his partner Bruno Soares, newly installed as the year- end No. 1 doubles team, were beaten in the semi- finals by Rajeev Ram and Raven Klaasen 6-1 6-4.