Andy Murray is the last man standing in Miami

Andy Murray produced a gritty performance in the sweltering Florida heat to emerge victorious in the Sony Open tournament, outlasting David Ferrer, 2-6 6-4 7-6(1). Apart from the $719,160 prize money, Murray was also rewarded with a No.2 place in the ATP world rankings. Murray had to dig deep and call upon his last reserves of will and energy to win his ninth ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title at the end of a seesaw battle which lasted 2 hours and 46 minutes.

With Miami being Murray’s training ground and with the Latin crowd cheering the Spaniard Ferrer, there was no dearth of supporters for either player and the venue had a festive look. Owing to the counter-punching nature of both the players, the final was expected to be a baseline slug-fest. Murray even led the head to head series 6-5, with 4 of Ferrer’s wins being on clay. Murray was expected to be the dominant of the two on a hard court owing to his recent successes as well.

But it was Ferrer who was quick off the blocks and shocked Murray in the first set. He held his serve comfortably throughout the first set, and was 5-0 up before Murray could manage to hold his serve and get on the score board. There were a couple of things which helped Ferrer dominate the proceedings. His first serve was firing when he needed it. Even his very first serve of the match was an ace. His backhand was finding chinks in the famous Murray backhand, and he even occasionally used his inside out forehand to create devastating angles. Facing the prospect of being bageled in the first set, Murray served clinically to hold serve for the first time in the match. Nerves showed for Ferrer when he failed to serve out the set at 5-1 and Murray stayed alive in the set by unleashing a superb forehand passing shot to break Ferrer. Just when it appeared that Murray had put his foot in the door, he wilted under the pressure poured by Ferrer and double faulted on set point to gift Ferrer the first set.

Murray needed to find his range as his shots were landing too short and he began to mount his comeback into the match by creating a break point opportunity in the first game of the second set. But the Spaniard held his serve after playing out a couple of deuce points. Murray got his first serve working for him and Ferrer gifted the break of serve to Murray in the third game courtesy of a double fault as well as a couple of unforced errors. Ferrer fought back and leveled the proceedings in the second set at 4-4, but Murray broke him decisively and served out the set at 5-4. The match had already taken the form of a battle of attrition as both the players were relying heavily on the others’ errors to get breaks of serve.

With the match tied at a set apiece and with the momentum in favour of the Scot, Murray did just enough in the first game of the third set to extract crucial errors from Ferrer and go up a break. But as was the pattern in the match, Ferrer received a reprieve from Murray who handed him the break back owing to a misfiring serve. Both players struggled to hold serve and traded a couple of breaks more. Both players showed fatigue, with Ferrer getting treated on his right leg and Murray getting wrong footed and even seeming to struggle with his movement at times. It was 6-5 in favour of the Spaniard and he managed to get a match point on Murray’s serve. Murray started dominating the rally, keeping the ball deep near the baseline and Ferrer challenged a line call at this crucial point, only to find the ball barely touching the outer part of the baseline. Murray held his nerve and his serve as well, but Ferrer seemed shattered to have missed the valuable match point. In the ensuing tiebreaker, Murray played some solid tennis, and at 0-5 in the tiebreaker, Ferrer started cramping but managed to bravely play the next three points.

Ferrer – Shattered after missing the match point

Murray seemed a much relieved man on playing a backhand winner to seal the match and bring an end to a nerve wrecking match. Both players had more than 40 unforced errors each and double faults on crucial points. There were instances when they had smacked their foreheads or stopped short of smashing their rackets. With both players displaying great retrieving skills, volleying at the net was a risky proposition as well. The match turned out to be a baseline slug-fest all right, but the quality of play was a tad disappointing.

Ferrer was left wondering “what if” after being just a point away from winning only his 2nd Masters 1000 title. He even apologized to the crowd saying he could not get that elusive point. “It was a very close match. I had my chance on the match point,” Ferrer said. “The ball, it was really close. I saw it out…I [made] my decision in that moment. It’s a bad moment now. I don’t want to think any more about that. I want to forget as [fast] as possible.

Murray is widely known to train very rigorously and is one of the fittest players on tour. “It’s taking a little while to sink in, because it’s tough to think really at the end of the match,” Murray remarked. “It was so tough physically and mentally that you were just trying to play each point. I wasn’t thinking too much only because I was so tired and [did] not [have] too many nerves at the end of the match, either.”

Murray, through this win, reinforced the supremacy of the top 4 or the Fab Four in men’s tennis. Before Ferrer’s Paris Masters win (his first and only Masters Title) towards the end of 2012, it’s only in 2010 that we can find someone outside the top 4 winning a Masters title (Soderling won Paris Masters in 2010). The Fab Four have combined to win 25 of the last 27 Masters 1000. Ferrer can definitely take heart from his performance here, and with the upcoming clay court tournaments, he has good reason to believe that he can go a step further. But how deep is the chasm between the Fab Four and the rest? Going by the narrow margin of Murray’s win, it might not be much, but then, can Ferrer or anyone else beat the Fab Four players twice in the same tournament? My prediction is, not in the near future; the top 4 are just too good.

With Rafael Nadal’s return to top flight with his Indian Wells triumph, and with Murray’s Miami triumph, the current number one Novak Djokovic has his work cut out for the upcoming clay court season. Federer has always been a force to reckon with, considering his smart scheduling. The tennis fans are up for a treat the coming season. Murray though might not have missed his other three illustrious peers, as he remained the last man standing in Miami to lift the Sony Open title.