Murray, Wawrinka move into Abu Dhabi semifinals
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ANDY Murray set up a World Tennis Championship semifinal clash with Rafael Nadal when he battled to a hard-earned 7-6 (7/1), 5-7, 6-4 win over Spain’s Feliciano Lopez on Thursday.
Murray, 27, needed five match points before he secured victory and will next look to clinch a double over Nadal in the Abu Dhabi exhibition tournament having defeated the Spanish great in the final in 2009.
“It was really good,” Murray told the www.national.ae.
“We played two-and-a-half hours, and it was a fairly high-quality match. There were some periods in the match, a couple of games, where the level dropped a bit, but there were some good rallies. Lopez is a different opponent to most of the players you play on the tour these days, so it was a good test for me, and I am happy I got two-and-a-half hours of good, competitive tennis to start the year.”
Murray said he was looking forward to facing Nadal as the world’s top players use the three-day exhibition tournament for crucial practice ahead of the new ATP season, which gets underway this weekend.
“When you have not played a match after a while, normally you can wake up a bit stiff the next day, a bit sore,” added Murray. “So I will see how I wake up on Friday, but it is good for me to be able to test myself against Rafa and I will keep trying to improve. I am now guaranteed another two matches here, which is perfect and exactly what the players want.”
In Thursday’s late match, Australian Open champion Stan Wawrinka eased past Spain’s Nicolas Almagro 6-3, 6-2. Wawrinka will next face world No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the semifinals.
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