Madrid, May 9 (IANS) Number one seed Novac Djokovic defeated reigning Champion, Andy Murray 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 to claim the Mutua Madrid Open crown on Sunday.
The win, which was Djokovic’ s fifth win in the last 6 ATP 1000 competitions, gives Djokovic a record of 29 ATP 1000 titles, one more than Spain’ s Rafael Nadal, who was beaten by Murray in Saturday’ s semi-final.
The Serb began much stronger than Murray and dropped just three points on his serve in the first set. He was also highly effective with his second serve, winning 80 percent of second service points as he hugged the baseline and made Murray do all of the running.
However, the Scot fought back in the second set, breaking Djokovic to move 3-1 ahead in the second set and with both players holding their remaining serves that was enough to see him take the second set to level the match.
The match was turning into a classic and seemed to turn again in the second game of the third set as Murray missed an easy point in his first service game and Djokovic went on to break following a 23-shot rally.
Murray showed courage to break straight back, but Djokovic broke again in the sixth game of what was turning into a compelling final set, to take a 4-2 lead.
Murray held again and then took a 0-40 advantage in what was to be the final game, only for Djokovic to defend all three and break points and tie the game at 40-40. Four more times Murray had the chance to break, but each time Djokovic defended and it was the Serb who finally sealed the win as Murray hit a return into the net.
