More messages than when he won Wimbledon!

THE act of winning the Paris Masters turned out to be massively more difficult for Andy Murray than the process of becoming the world No 1 the previous day. Having been ushered through to the final with the withdrawal of Milos Raonic on Saturday — sealing the No 1 spot — he was given a fearsome challenge by giant American John Isner before prevailing 6-3, 6-7, 6-4. By doing so Murray put himself 405 points ahead of Novak Djokovic at the top of the world rankings, and placed the destiny of the year-end top spot in his own hands. While there is some infernal arithmetic involved, if Murray can match or better his Serbian rival at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals that start next Sunday then he will stay at the pinnacle for the off-season, heading into 2017. In defeat he would have been a fractional five points ahead, which had been guaranteed by Raonic’s anti-climactic scratching. ‘I might only be there for one week

so I might as well enjoy it,’ said Murray, who is actually assured of it for a minimum of a fortnight. ‘Sometimes after you achieve something big or something that you didn’t expect, it can be quite easy to have a letdown and feel a little bit flat. I felt really nervous before the match today, and I was happy about that. It has all happened really quickly. I don’t know if it has sunk in.’ He said he had received more congratulatory messages on Saturday than after winning Wimbledon. The draw for the O2 Arena will be made this afternoon, and for the first time Murray will be No 1 seed when the eight players are divided into two groups. Murray — who will join up with Ivan Lendl on Wednesday — will be shooting for a ninth title of the season after adding the last of the season’s Masters-level titles to his collection. Of the nine events on the Masters tier, just below the Grand Slams, he has now won all but Monte Carlo and Indian Wells. Isner played well, but the difference was Murray’s sangfroid on the big points. He had two break points against the Scot in the first set and four in the second. It is an extraordinary statistic that in their eight matches he has had 41 break points and converted just one of them. Despite that he was good value for the second set, taking the tiebreak 7-4 after Murray double-faulted at 2-3. Murray’s return of serve began to exert pressure in the decider and Isner began to look weary, with a treatment given to his knee while the Scot made play of how fresh he was feeling. He nicked it with a break of serve at the death, testing the shaky volleys of Isner, who was restricted to 18 aces. Murray was hailed by a crowd of 14,000 packed inside Bercy. Strangely, they have seen more British champions (Henman, Rusedski and Murray) in the past 20 years than French ones.