Taking the court as the world No. 1 for the first time, Andy Murray got the job done.
The Wimbledon champion was tested for much of his opening match at the ATP World Tour Finals, but still came out on top, beating Marin Cilic 6-3, 6-2 on Monday at the O2 Arena in London in front of his British fans.
“It was obviously nice to play in that stadium with the crowd like that. It obviously helps,” Murray said. “After a long, kind of, few months, it’s nice to know that I’m going to be finishing the year playing in that sort of atmosphere.”
Photo: EPA
Murray took over at the top of the rankings last week, replacing Novak Djokovic, but the year-end No. 1 ranking is still up for grabs and could be decided on Sunday if both Murray and Djokovic reach the final.
However, the prospect of attaining that does not seem to be weighing too heavily on Murray’s mind.
“The last few days, I haven’t thought about it too much,” Murray said. “It didn’t change much for me.”
It certainly has not affected his ability to win matches. Murray has won a career-high eight titles this season, including a second Wimbledon title in July and a second straight Olympic gold medal in August. Since then, he has won titles in Beijing, Shanghai, Vienna and Paris.
The latest victory did not come so easy. Murray struggled to win his service games in the first set against Cilic, but still ended up saving all but one of the five break points he faced in the match. On the other side, he converted four of his five break points.
“When I need to step in, I didn’t. When I need to wait a little bit longer, I wasn’t waiting,” 2014 US Open champion Cilic said. “The hitting could have been better. Yeah, a little bit unfortunate to go 6-3, 6-2 down, where it felt it was much, much closer in the first set. Beginning of the second, I had couple [of] chances as well.”
In the early match, Stan Wawrinka finally lost a match at the ATP World Tour Finals to someone who has not been ranked world No. 1.
The US Open champion, who has reached the semi-finals of the season-ending tournament in the previous three years, was beaten 6-2, 6-3 by Kei Nishikori.
“It was not a great match compared to what I can do, that’s for sure,” Wawrinka said. “I was a little bit slow on everything. I was hesitating a lot with my game, my movement.”
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