Juan Martin Del Potro Ends Murray Chances
27 November 2009
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Juan Martin Del Potro beat Roger Federer in a late night three set thriller at the O2 to dump Britain’s Andy Murray out of the ATP World Tour Finals.
It was a night of stats and maths as it all came down to the number of games won throughout the round robin stages with De Potro just edging out the Scot.
There was excitement in the O2 last night as it was a repeat of the U.S. Open Final where Del Potro wrestled the title from Federer over five sets.
And the Argentinean started like a train and immediately put pressure on Federer’s serve, while Del Potro’s service was as steady as a rock.
Unable to break the Del Potro serve things got progressively worse for the world number one as he went a double break down, unable to stay with the pace and the power of his opponent.
Del Potro had looked nervous and uncomfortable all week but looked a figure of confidence playing the best tennis since that win in Flushing Meadows back in September.
With Federer struggling on serve and his game littered with errors it wasn’t long before Del potro wrapped up the opening set.
This was crunch time for the world number one as if he suffered a straight sets defeat it would be he that was going home and Andy Murray going through to the semi finals in his place.
The Swiss player dug deep in the second set and saw his serve drastically improve but the only chance of the set to take the advantage came to Del Potro.
He has break point on the Federer but a forehand from Federer trickled over the net to keep his dreams of winning a fifth ATP World Tour Finals title alive.
So with that the only real chance to break the second set went into a tie-break and it was all about Del Potro in the early stage of that tie-break as he opened up a mini break.
But Federer fought back only to surrender the lead once again giving Del Potro 5-4 with two serves for the Argentinean to clinch victory.
However Federer wasn’t done fighting as he took both those point before finishing it off on his own serve to level the match.
All the momentum seemed to be with the world number on in the early stage of the final set however he failed to convert any of the three break chances that came his way in game seven.
And Del Potro made Federer pay for his mistake breaking him in the next game before serving out the match to win 6-2 6-7 (5-7) 6-3.
However as the match came to a close the players were still confused as to which players had progressed through to the semi finals.
Federer, Del Potro and Murray were all locked together win two wins and a loss a piece so it came down to the number of games won so far over the tournament.
Federer topped the group with a games won percentage of 44-40, Del Potro had 45 wins to 43 losses and this just edged out Murray who had 44 wins to 43 losses.
Del Potro and Federer must now wait to see who they will face as Robin Soderling, Nikolay Davydenko and Novak Djokovic all have a chance of progressing to the semi finals.
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