Andy Murray was on top of his game as he beat Tomas Berdych 6-4 6-4 to reach the Miami Open final for the fourth time. Victory levelled Murray’s head-to-head record against Berdych at 6-6 and clinched a showdown for the title on Sunday.
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The first three games went against the serve before Murray found his rhythm and began to dominate Berdych, ending the first set having hit 77 per cent of his first serves and won 80 per cent of those points.
A crushing return took him 0-30 up as Berdych served to begin the second set, and the Czech then dumped an easy volley into the net and double-faulted to gift Murray the break.
Berdych won a brilliant rally to get to 30-30 in Murray’s next service game and it was the Scot’s turn to double-fault at a key moment, setting up deuce.
A sublime lob put Murray back on top but he was unable to close the game out and again, the players had traded breaks at the start of the set. And again it became three in a row as some dominant returns from Murray took him 2-1 up and he was rarely troubled from there.
Down 0-30 in the ninth game of the second set, Berdych rallied to hold serve and force Murray to serve for the match. Murray trailed 0-30, but battled back and gave himself a match point with an angled forehand volley followed by a backhand crosscourt winner before sealing it with a final cross-court forehand that was too much for the Czech.
“I thought it was a high quality match,” said the 27-year-old Scot, who is set to return to No3 in the world next week. “We were both striking the ball clean. I felt I returned a bit better, and that made the difference.
“I did most things well, there’s not a lot I could complain about. My second serve was much better in the second set, I served well on the big points and got a lot of free points behind my serve.
Andy Murray is a great hard court player. Novak Djokovic has beaten him nine times in a row on hard courts
— Christopher Clarey (@christophclarey) April 4, 2015
“I dictated a lot of the points from the baseline and that’s important because when he’s inside the baseline and controls points, he’s a very powerful guy.”
Murray is looking to cap a brilliant week after claiming his 500th career win en route to the final, defeating Kevin Anderson in the fourth round. He became the ninth active player and the 46th man in the Open Era to achieve the feat.
The third-seeded Scot has now moved into his 13th ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title match and 47th overall at the tourlevel. He is the fifth player in the Open Era to reach at least four Miami finals, joining Andre Agassi (8), Novak Djokovic (5), Pete Sampras (4) and Rafael Nadal (4).
