Andy Murray keeps home fans on edge of seats but ends with a bad break

Published on Thursday 26 November 2009 23:00

IT WAS agonisingly close. So close, perhaps, that it should have been referred to Hawk-Eye.

Certainly, Andy Murray must have wished he could have challenged the outcome of Group A in the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. In the end, though, there was no disputing the fact that the Scot had lost out by the narrowest of margins, and that Roger Federer and Juan Martin del Potro were both through to the semi-finals after the best match of the tournament so far.

Murray went home to rest after his 6-4, 6-7, 7-6 win over Fernando Verdasco in the afternoon, and said he would not watch the night match between the world No 1 and Del Potro.

The Scot would have qualified automatically for the last four if he had beaten Verdasco in straight sets, but his failure to do so meant that both Federer and Del Potro would go through if the latter won in three sets and significantly improved his games-for-and-against tally into the bargain.

This seemed improbable, on the grounds that when you beat Federer it is usually by a narrow margin. But Del Potro not only won the match, triumphing 6-2, 6-7, 6-3, he did so by exactly the number of games required to pip Murray.

Had Del Potro won in straight sets, Federer would have been out. Had Del Potro won in a third-set tie-break, he would have been eliminated. Once the two had won a set apiece, the only way the giant from Argentina could qualify was by winning 6-3 or better.

As the deciding set wore on that outcome looked less plausible by the minute. After stunning Federer by running away with the first set, and then standing only two points from victory in the second-set tiebreak, Del Potro was beginning to look tired.

Six games in the score was 3-3. Surely the match was so tight that Del Potro could not win the next three games? But that is precisely what he did, and in a fashion that surely convinced all but the most hardened of Murray supporters that he deserved to go through.

With all three men having two wins apiece and identical set scores, Federer won the group because he had won a greater percentage of his games – 44 to 40. Del Potro, whose tally was 45-43, went through as the runner-up, and Murray (44-43) fell a game short. Verdasco brought up the rear, having lost all three of his matches.

The quality of the night match was evident for all to see, but the reality was that Murray could have rendered all the calculations about games and sets and percentages redundant by winning more convincingly in the afternoon. His match took exactly three hours, but he could have wrapped it up in around half that time – and if he had done so, he would have been in the semis.

The thing was, while he fell short of qualification, he did play significantly better than he had done two days earlier against Federer. Murray's serve, which by his own account had been "pants" in that match, was an altogether more respectable garment in this contest, especially in the first set.

His problem, however, was in taking his opportunities against Verdasco's serve. Of the 13 break points he had in the match, he converted only one, a very poor ratio at this level. Afterwards, though, Murray preferred to give Verdasco credit for a battling display rather than berate himself for what was at least a better performance than his match against Federer. "He served great. After the first set he played like he had nothing to lose, and he was hitting huge forehands, huge serves. Even when he was down break point he was going for huge shots as well."

The Scot got out of the blocks quicker than his opponent, and in his first four service games lost an average of only a point a game. Verdasco committed more than double Murray's number of unforced errors over the match, but crucially played with nothing to lose after going a set down.

Murray should have pressed home his advantage in the second set, but instead he became more tentative. When the tiebreak came, the Spaniard got a mini-break on the second point and was never behind as he went on to win it 7-4 on a double-fault. Murray had another break point in the second game of the deciding set, but once he failed to convert that there were few other openings for either player throughout the rest of the regulation dozen games.

This time in the tiebreak, it was Murray who succeeded in taking an early lead and holding on to it. A double-fault put Verdasco 4-2 behind and after that the British No 1 lost only one point, winning 7-3.

In normal circumstances that would have been enough for Murray to go through. But 'normal circumstances' were not a phrase you could apply to last night's barely credible climax.

• Scotland's Elena Baltacha is through to the quarter-finals of the ITF event in Japan after beating Korea's So-Jung Kim 6-4, 6-3.