Murray completes Asian hat-trick with Shanghai Masters title

Lim Yamaguchi October 17, 2011 0

Murray completes Asian hat-trick with Shanghai Masters title

SHANGHAI: The Scottish tennis player Andy Murray has come to his own as he clinched third successive title in Asia by defeating David Ferrer of Spain in straight sets on Sunday and with it surpassed Roger Federer as the third best tennis player in the world.

Andy Murray is in tremendous form these days as he completed a stunning hat-trick of titles thus putting an end to all the speculations regarding his abilities to win titles.

Murray simply looked unstoppable on Sunday when he easily did away with David Ferrer by 7-5 6-4 to lift the Shanghai Masters title and surged for the first time in his career to the ATP World Number 3 position.

This was Murray’s 25^th victory this year from a total of 26 matches he has played and dislodged the Swiss tennis legend from the ATP top three for the first time in eight long years.

The last three weeks have been phenomenal for the Scot as he powered his way to three consecutive titles, his best winning streak in the ATP World Tour, after winning in Bangkok, Tokyo, and now in Shanghai. During the course, he also overpowered the world number two Spaniard Rafael Nadal which shows a great improvement in his game.

Talking about his incredible form and with it the success, Andy Murray told reporters here, “If you finish in front of Federer in a year, then there’s not many people in the last five, six, seven years that have been able to say that. I’m still not guaranteed to finish (the year) at number three; I’m still going to have to win some more matches”.

Talking about the last three weeks of success, Murray said, “This is the best tournament run of my life. I was very nervous as I wanted to retain the title.”

Fifth seed David Ferrer, who was looking to win him first ATP title, was of the view, “It is difficult to beat Andy at the moment; he is playing very confidently. Maybe in the first set I had my chance at 5-5 30-30 but I played so bad in that game. After that, I served badly for a very long time”.