ATP World Tour Finals: Andy Murray vs David Ferrer match report - British No 1 on target for a dream end to his season

Andy Murray’s season will be over in less than a fortnight’s time and as each day passes the Scot is moving closer to making it a finale to remember. With a 6-4, 6-4 victory over David Ferrer here yesterday at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals Murray both took a first step towards qualification for Saturday’s semi-finals and moved within one more win of ensuring he will finish the year at No 2 in the world rankings for the first time.

Murray will have the No 2 position in the bag as early as this evening if Roger Federer loses his second round-robin match to Novak Djokovic. Federer can overtake Murray only if he wins the title here without losing a round-robin match and if the Scot fails to win again this week.

The major benefit of finishing at No 2 would be the knowledge that at the Australian Open in January Murray could not face Djokovic – by some margin the game’s best player at the moment – until the final. For all Ferrer’s dogged qualities, Murray went into his opening match knowing that he had beaten the Spaniard in six of their seven previous meetings. Ferrer struggled on his serve throughout, making eight double-faults, including one on set point in the first set.

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Murray dropped serve in the opening game of the second set but levelled at 3-3 and went on to secure victory with his third break of the match.

“My timing was a little bit off in the first couple of games, but I got it back pretty quickly, which was pleasing,” Murray said afterwards. “If you’re looking for a little bit of rhythm, he’s a guy who makes you hit a lot of balls. The rallies are often quite long, so you can get into a rhythm against him. So that was good.”

Murray’s second round-robin match tomorrow will be against Rafael Nadal, who continued his recent run of improved form to beat Stan Wawrinka 6-3, 6-2 last night.

After dropping his serve to love in the opening game the Spaniard capitalised on a string of unforced errors by Wawrinka, whose frustration was evident when he twice threw his racket as he dropped serve in the eighth game of the first set.

The biggest end-of-season target for Murray is next week’s Davis Cup final against Belgium in Ghent.

With that in mind the Scot was happy to report that he had come through his latest change of playing surface without any physical problems. For the last four weeks he has been alternating between hard courts and clay – the latter will be the playing surface in Ghent – and has avoided the back problems he has experienced in such circumstances in the past.

“I’ve totally changed my schedule and the way I’ve trained over the last two months, since our last Davis Cup tie, to make sure I am fresh for this part of the season, which hasn’t always been the case,” Murray added. “Last year I came in [to the World Tour Finals] probably not feeling my best after playing six weeks in a row.

“I’ve only played two tournaments in the last seven or eight weeks. I feel good just now. Hopefully, I can perform well here and in Belgium.”

The Scot was asked whether he had any concerns about security at the Davis Cup final given the arrests that have been made in Belgium in the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.

“I think everybody right now is concerned about things, but I do think the best thing that we can do is to live our normal lives, not change too much, because then the terrorists are the ones that are winning,” Murray said.

“We need to go out there and do what we always do and try not to change too much. That’s all we can do. I don’t want to live my life in fear each time I step on a tennis court, so that’s what I’ll do.”