Murray ends year as world number one, extends streak

Andy Murray beat Novak Djokovic at the ATP World Tour Finals to claim his first title and, perhaps more importantly, end the year as the men’s world number one tennis player for the first time in his career. Being broken twice serving for the match was frustrating. The top seed from Great Britain beat Japan’s Kei Nishikori in a 3-hour, 21-minute match on Wednesday – previously the longest in tournament history. I’m not suggesting I played a bad match.

Djokovic might just be in better shape after overwhelming Nishikori, who held his serve only once all match.

Novak Djokovic believes Andy Murray should be allowed to enjoy ending the season as world No 1, and not be questioned about keeping the ranking in 2017.

The 29-year-old said: “It’s been a fantastic year”. Today we both, Andy and I, were part of the history and it was an honour to be on the court and to be a part of the big occasion.

“This is one of the biggest matches we will ever play against each other”, he added.

It extended Murray’s winning run to 24 matches, earned him a fifth straight title and a cheque for almost £2million.

“But these next few years, obviously I want to try and make them the best of my career”.

Murray, who takes home $2,391,000 and 1,500 Emirates ATP Rankings points, is the 10th different No. 1 ranked player to win the title at the season finale.

As if winning a second Wimbledon title, taking a second Olympic gold medal and becoming a father for the first time wasn’t enough to keep him happy, Murray is now looking down on the rest of the tennis world from his new perch. That’s why it became harder, as well, to close the match out, because I knew that the longer the match went, the worse I was going to feel, and probably the better he was going to play, too. I was lucky I got it finished in two sets‘.

“Stan is one of the best players in the world”.

“I pretty much executed everything that I tactically planned to do before the match“. Murray eventually took his third-match point in an epic, third-set tiebreaker. I would obviously like to stay there.

After thoroughly dominating the Serb in the first set with strong shot placement and accurately angled shots, Murray played some wily tennis to seal it 6-3; Djokovic, who has come back from a set down in the past, looked however to put in a solid fight back in the second.