Andy Murray: I Was Lucky I Won In Two Sets
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What weekend for Andy Murray. On Saturday he won the longest 3-set match of the season beating Milos Raonic 57, 76(5), 76(9) in a 3 hours, 38 minutes.
Murray had little time to recover with the final the next day. And with many writing him off against the fit and rested Novak Djokovic, Murray surprised those critics winning rather easily and not showing any signs of fatigue from the day before. But he admitted afterward his body wasn’t struggling.
“I felt tired. I slept well last night, but I didn’t feel great this morning,” Murray said Sunday. “The practice, the warmup for the match, I was hitting the ball fine, but just a bit sluggish, a bit heavy-legged.
“Thankfully the first sort of seven games of the match, there was no long rallies really at all, which for us is strange. Novak came out and served great his first couple service games. I got a lot of free points off my first serve, as well.
“It wasn’t really until the middle of the second set when the rallies started to get extended and longer that my legs were starting to feel it. That’s why it became harder, as well, to close the match out, because I knew that the longer the match went, the worse I was going to feel, and probably the better he was going to play, too.
“I was lucky I got it finished in two sets.”
Murray led 41 with two breaks but Djokovic got a break back and with momentum in the balance and maybe fatigue playing a role, things got interesting.
Serving at 54, Murray never faced a break point but Djokovic was a few times two points from 5-all. He couldn’t level and Murray won his first ATP Finals title and the No. 1 ranking.
“When I got broken at 4-1, Novak definitely started to hit the ball a bit bigger,” Murray said. “He was getting closer to the baseline. I was starting to back off a little bit. That last game was obviously, you know, a tough one. Thankfully he made a few mistakes.”
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