The straight-set trend continued at the World Tour Finals on Monday.
Following Andy Murray’s 6-4, 6-4 defeat of David Ferrer to begin round-robin action in Group Ilie Nastase, Rafael Nadal thrashed a disgruntled Stan Wawrinka 6-3, 6-2. Murray (1:30) and Nadal (1:22) needed just two hours and 50 minutes combined to set up an intriguing showdown on Wednesday afternoon.
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Wawrinka actually opened the nightcap with a break at love, but it was all downhill from there. The fourth-ranked Swiss got broken right right back–also at love–and never recovered.
A break point faced by Nadal at 0-1, 30-40 in the second set proved to be Wawrinka’s last gap. The Spaniard saved it with an on-the-run lob before holding for 1-1 two points later. Growing increasingly frustrated and unafraid to show it, Wawrinka melted down the rest of the way.
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“Today I was bothered with everything,” the reigning French Open champion lamented. “Just everything went the wrong way. I don’t know. Was just a really bad day at the office. Bad behaving in the second set; going too fast–things that are not too great on myself.”
“I think I play well,” Nadal assessed. “I think I play a solid match. I had one bad game, the first one of the match. But then immediately I was playing well, no? For the moment I didn’t serve as good as I was doing in the previous days. But for the rest, all the shots worked well–backhand, forehand, good volleys, good smash…no missing the smashes today. So that’s good.”
“He’s playing better than a few months ago, that’s for sure,” Wawrinka added. “But still, for sure he’s not where he wants to be probably or where he was when he was No. 1 and really strong.”
As for Murray, he has never been No. 1 but needs only one more win this week to end the year No. 2 behind Novak Djokovic. In his victory over Ferrer, Murray battled back from a break down in the second and broke his opponent at 5-4 in each set.
“(In the) first couple of games my timing was a little bit off,” said Murray, who had been practicing on clay the previous week in advance of the upcoming Davis Cup final between Great Britain and Belgium. “But I got it back pretty quickly, which was pleasing. If you’re looking for a little bit of rhythm, he’s also 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.”
“When the serve doesn’t work [against] top-10 players, it’s difficult (to) beat him,” explained Ferrer, who double-faulted eight times. “Anyway, in important moments he was better than me. He played more aggressive than me. [At] the end of both sets, I didn’t play so good.”
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