Andy Murray has tried his best to make a spot at the year-ending ATP World Tour finals in London and he did. But it was unfortunate that he could not make it to the top.
It was a challenging season for Murray. He has won competitions and losing many of them. But despite this, he had inched his way to the yearend events which is very crucial for many tennis players.
Murray had a weak opening at the ATP World Tour Finals as he faced Kei Nishikori in the round robin events. Murray succumb to defeat against the rising Japanese star with a final score of 6-4, 6-4.
According to Murray "t's harder to qualify when you lose your first match - that's pretty obvious. But unlike the other events you still have a chance to go through. If this were anywhere else, I would be out of the tournament."
Adding "You need to try to forget about today, work on some things tomorrow, and hopefully play better on Tuesday ... I need to win my next two matches more than likely, and win them well if I want to go through. I'm definitely going to have to play better if I want to get through."
On the other hand, Nishikori said that he played as he had planned but to the point that he even surprised himself in the process.
He said "But same time I was really excited to play with this crowd. You know, I was thinking, 'very honoured to be here'. First time to be top‑eight player. I was really happy that I played good tennis on this situation."
"I knew I was going to get little bit tight because this is my first opportunity here. And playing Andy, I never beat him before. But I was little bit surprised at how I played on the court, very confident. Very looking forward to play next match."
With this, it seems like Nishikori is off to face Federer having the same record of 2-2.
He lamented "After turning pro, I was feeling a lot of respect to everybody actually, especially top players. Like first time I play Roger, couldn't play anything because I respect too much. I wasn't go for win actually. I was just ... playing tennis against my idol. That was one of the problem I had."
He continued "But after couple years I got, I don't know, mentally strong. I have to be strong to beat them. Maybe that's one of the reason we Asia players has to be really strong. You have to believe yourself."
