Unbelievable Djokovic. As we have been saying for the last couple of weeks he is playing at his very best and he demonstrated once again that he is the man to beat.
Nole produced an incredible performance to defeat a very inspired Murray and to get back from the brink. Djokovic wins his 33rd career title and the 7th 1000 ATP Master. Not bad!
The Match 5-7 7-6 (11) 6-3
The 1st set was as quirky as you can get. These two were so good at returning that serving wasn’t any advantage at all. In fact, we had a whopping 7 breaks on 12 games (wow)! Murray made it clear from the beginning that he wasn’t there to be another sparring partner for Nole. The Scott fought back a 0-2 deficit to win 3 consecutive games and re-establish the equilibrium. Finally it was Andy to win the set 7-5 winning an incredible 11th game when Nole was serving and up 40-0. Nole was visibly upset to destroy his racket.
The second set was an epic. Murray was in great control till he was leading 5-4 30-0 on his serve. Then the turning point came when Nole produced an sensational point difficult to describe.. but you can see it above…
Time to save a whopping 5 match points and go to the decider.
The third set was a bit more “normal” with Nole breaking Murray twice without conceding a break point. The Serb won the match ni 3hours and 32 minutes.
From Djokovic
“It’s difficult to judge who was better because it was so close throughout the whole match,” said Djokovic. “We had so many rallies in three and a half hours; for a best-of-three set match it is a very long time. Could have easily gone the other way. He was five match points up. When I faced those match points, I tried to focus on each individually. He was so close to the victory that I cannot say I was the better player.”
From Murray
“It was a disappointing one to lose,” said Murray. “I’ve lost tougher matches than that before in the biggest events. So I’m sure I’ll recover from it pretty well. The second set, I probably played a little bit better. But he came up, served very well on the match points. The one match point I had on my serve, he hit the forehand onto the edge of the line. On the game where I served for the match, he also came up with some good shots.
“It’s not like I threw the match away. I didn’t make any real glaring errors or anything. When I had my chances, he just served very well and hit a couple of lines when he needed to.”
That was so much fun!
