World no. 4 Andy Murray beat Gilles Simon of France 6-4, 7-6 (6) on Sunday to win the Mutua Madrilena Madrid Masters.The U.S. Open finalist became the first Briton to win four titles in a season.
He will be the first Briton in the Open era since Fred Perry in 1936 to finish the year at No. 4.
“Gilles was hitting much better from behind the baseline, but I got a lot of free points from my serve,” Murray said.
“That was probably the key to my win today.”
Simon had previously won five straight three-set matches at Madrid.“I couldn’t move like I’m used to and Andy knew it, so he tried to kill me by making me run,” said Simon, barely able to walk the step up to the microphone.Murray beat Roger Federer in the semifinals, while Simon defeated top-ranked Rafael Nadal to reach his fourth final this year.
“Often I missed two easy shots, one after another. That’s why I lost today; I couldn’t focus on every point. It was too much effort for me.”
Their victories denied a fifth Nadal-Federer final of 2008.
I know you guys would have liked to have seen a Roger-Rafa final but you brought a great atmosphere, so thanks for coming,” Murray told the crowd at the Madrid Arena, which hosted the tournament for the final time as it moves to the newly built “Caja Magica” (Magic Box) next year.The 23-year-old Simon is ninth in the race to qualify for the season-ending tournament—seven points behind No. 7 David Ferrer and six back of Juan Martin del Potro and the eighth and final qualifying spot.
“It won’t be easy because there are one or two tournaments left. I don’t know if I play in Lyon because right now I just want to rest,” Simon said.
In the doubles final, 7th-seeded Poles Marcin Matkowski and Mariusz Fyrstenberg won their second ATP title of the season on Sunday with a 6-4, 6-2 victory over 4th seeds Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles at the Mutua Madrilena Masters Madrid.It is the first ATP Masters Series title for the Poles, who finished runners-up to Bob and Mike Bryan in the Madrid final last season.
In the quarterfinals this week they knocked out second seeds and Wimbledon champions Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic and they saved three match points in their semifinal win over Jeff Coetzee and Wesley Moodie.
The Poles began the week at No. 9 in the Stanford ATP Doubles Race with 307 points, 17 points behind Marcelo Melo and Andre Sa in eighth position.They won their first ATP title of the season at Warsaw, and have also finished runners-up at Barcelona, Bucharest and Metz; this is their seventh career team title. They now have a 33-23 match record on the season.
(Via AP, ATP official website, Images via Yahoo! Sport)
