Despite his fourth round loss in this year’s Australian Open, Andy Murray is back to cementing the reason he’s the best ranked male tennis player with his first 2017 win at the Dubai Duty Free Championships over Fernando Verdasko 6-3, 6-2, in just an hour and 13 minutes. The win in Dubai is the Scotsman’s 45th ATP trophy and as usual with the Great Britain player, the first win for his country.
Andy Murray won his first ATP championship of the year with the Dubai victory. The win was his seventh straight final out of eight tournaments, building on last year’s impressive run that culminated in his No. 1 world ranking at the end of that year.
Much of the talk for the past few months has centered on the historic final between great rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal at this year’s Australian Open, concluding with the Swiss tennis player’s record 18th title. Murray had been shockingly ousted at the tournament by 30-year-old Mischa Zverev, who was later taken out by a rejuvenated Federer. After Murray left the tournament, he suffered a bout of shingles.
“A lot of people said that afterwards, once the rash is gone, that you can feel very tired for quite a few weeks, a number of weeks afterwards. I was maybe a little bit more tired than usual at the beginning, but I really feel fine now,” Murray explained to ATP at the beginning of the Dubai tourney.
Taking his AO loss and lengthy layoff into account, he was ambivalent about how he would fare in Dubai. He had never won here before and considering Roger Federer’s resurgence Down Under performance and his seven Dubai titles, many expected the Swiss maestro to defeat Murray in their potential semi-final matchup.
“It will be a tough ask to win this year,” he said at the beginning of the Dubai event, in an interview with Sky Sports.
With Federer bowing out in a surprise loss to qualifier (and 115th ranked) Yevgeny Donskoy in the second round of Dubai, Murray’s chances looked all the more promising, until his quarterfinal matchup against Philipp Kohlschreiber, where he saved seven match points to make it to the semis.
“There was a bit of luck involved there, but often when you get through matches like that it settles you down for the rest of the tournament,” Murray said after that match, according to UK’s Telegraph.
With the Masters 500 level victory, Murray greatly increases his ranking points above competitor Novak Djokovic by over 2,000, making him a significant world No. 1, which he’s held for 17 weeks now, the 17th in the record books, just above Andy Roddick and Boris Becker. Murray has been on a massive success run since mid-2016 and has collected a considerable amount of ATP ranking points, a hold that will be difficult for second ranked Djokovic to overtake, even with successive runs in upcoming Indian Wells and Miami.
“It’s been a great run. Can’t complain about much,” Murray said, according to USA Today.
“It’s nice to win and I played much better as the match went on,” said Murray in his post-match interview, according to ATP World Tour. “I started a little bit slow, but I was solid… I defended pretty well and moved well… It was obviously good to win the first tournament here.”
The win in Dubai is a reminder to the other three of the Big Four there’s a reason the Scot has remained the best ranked ATP player in the world for almost a year. Since the Madrid Mutua Open in May 2016, with only the US and Australian Opens as exceptions in his successive streak, the 29 year-old champion has appeared in the last 14 out of 16 ATP finals, including his third grand slam triumph at Wimbledon.
In addition to Murray’s amazing run in 2016, he also collected his second Olympic gold medal in Rio, in a dramatic final against Argentina’s Juan Martin del Potro. He ended that year on top, winning UK’s Sportsperson of the Year for a record third year and receiving the great honor of knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II at the beginning of 2017.
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With his ranking points only increasing with his latest win and back in optimum health, it looks like Andy Murray is picking up right where he left off at the end of 2016. He seems determined as ever and isn’t wasting anytime affirming his dominant tennis ranking. Directly after his win in the United Arab Emerites, he boarded a 16-hour flight to Los Angeles to begin preparations for the Indian Wells Masters event. It’s likely that he will continue the rest of the season on the roll that was started last year.