Murray, Ferrer Reach Shanghai Final at BetLM

Murray, Ferrer Reach Shanghai Final

Updated Oct 15, 2011 6:00 PM ET

SHANGHAI

Andy Mur­ray over­pow­ered Japan’s Kei Nishikori 6–3, 6–0 Sat­ur­day, set­ting up a Shang­hai Mas­ters final against David Fer­rer and tak­ing another step in his bid to pass Roger Fed­erer in the rankings.

Fer­rer, ranked No. 5, strug­gled past fel­low Spaniard Feli­ciano Lopez 6–7 (5), 6–3, 6–3. It was the third straight match he has come back to win after los­ing the first set.

Mur­ray, the defend­ing cham­pion, has won 24 of his last 25 matches and is try­ing to cap­ture his third tour­na­ment in three weeks. If he wins the title Sun­day, he will advance from No. 4 to No. 3 and over­take Fed­erer in the rank­ings, a goal he had set for the end of the year.

Fed­erer made last year’s Shang­hai final but skipped this year’s tour­na­ment to rest and recover from injuries. He hasn’t been ranked below No. 3 since June 2003 – just before he won his first Grand Slam at Wimbledon.

Mur­ray has been ranked as high as No. 2 but has never fin­ished the year higher than No. 4.

”It’s not the ulti­mate goal, but it’s a step in the right direc­tion,” he said.

Nishikori won just one point on the Scotsman’s serve in the first set and six in the entire match, which lasted less than an hour.

The 21-year-old player has had the best week of his career, defeat­ing two Top 20 play­ers – Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France and Alexandr Dol­go­polov of Ukraine. His rank­ing will improve to about No. 32 next week, the high­est ever for a Japan­ese player on the ATP tour.

”I didn’t have any chance to break him. He had a good return. I mean, good every­thing,” Nishikori said. ”He was really, like, genius to play.”

Mur­ray has barely been tested this week. He received a bye in the first round, a walkover in the sec­ond and eas­ily beat a 124th-ranked qual­i­fier in the quar­ter­fi­nals. The Scot dropped one set to the only seeded player he’s faced, No. 13 Stanis­las Wawrinka of Switzerland.

Fer­rer, mean­while, had to save three match points in his third-round win over Juan Car­los Fer­rero and edged Andy Rod­dick in the quar­ter­fi­nals in a third-set tiebreaker.

He had a tough time with Lopez, too. Although Lopez is ranked 23 spots below Fer­rer, he had a 6–1 record against his coun­try­man on hard courts com­ing into the match and had elim­i­nated three seeded play­ers in straight sets to reach the semifinals.

”I know the record with him, it was bad, no? But I tried to refo­cus on my game,” Fer­rer said. ”I had con­fi­dence with me, with my game.”

Lopez was aggres­sive in the first set, com­ing in behind his big serve and back­hand slice repeat­edly to fin­ish off points at the net. After going down 4–1 in the tiebreaker, Lopez hit three big serves and a run­ning back­hand cross­court win­ner to come back to take the set.

But Fer­rer rebounded in the sec­ond, break­ing Lopez in the third game when Lopez hit a slice back­hand wide. He then got the deci­sive break in the third set when Lopez missed another shot badly wide while serv­ing at 3–4.

”Maybe today I played the bet­ter match of this week,” he said. ”When I lost the first set, I tried to for­get the tiebreak and I tried to focus again. I played bet­ter in the sec­ond and the third.”

Mur­ray has won seven Mas­ters tour­na­ments; Fer­rer is look­ing for his first such vic­tory. Mur­ray also has beaten Fer­rer twice this year – last week in the semi­fi­nals of the Japan Open in Tokyo and in the semi­fi­nals of the Aus­tralian Open in January.

”He’s one of the tough­est guys on the tour to play against,” Mur­ray said. ”I played well against him last week but every match is obvi­ously dif­fer­ent. He’s def­i­nitely going to be bang up for the match.”

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