SHANGHAI -- Andy Murray made it another Sunday to savour as he successfully retained his Shanghai Masters title by beating Spain's David Ferrer in straight sets.
The Scot beat Rafael Nadal seven days ago to take the Japan Open title, and a week before that he thrashed Donald Young to triumph in Bangkok, and Ferrer could not prevent him completing a hat-trick of tournament victories in Asia.
The first game of the match at the Qi Zhong stadium lasted 10 minutes with a succession of lengthy baseline rallies before Murray broke to seize an early advantage -- only for Ferrer to immediately break back.
Serve then dominated until the 11th game, which proved to be the turning point of the set and the match, Ferrer double-faulting to lose the game after looking comfortable at 30-0.
The second set followed the same pattern at the start, with Murray grabbing the early break only for Ferrer to pull level at 1-1 as the Scot smashed a ball into the ground in frustration.
But a horrendous missed overhead from third seed Ferrer handed the British player two break points in the following game and he made no mistake, hoisting a lob from behind the baseline to win the game, and going on to take the match with few alarms.
Murray won 7-5, 6-4 and will rise to No.3 in the new world rankings, going ahead of Roger Federer for the first time in his career.
It will be the first time Federer has fallen out of the top three since June 2003 just before he won his first Wimbledon title.
Murray has now won 25 of his 26 matches since mid-August, the only loss coming to Nadal in the semi-final of the US Open.
Ferrer, 29, who was disappointed with his serving, said: "Today it was impossible to beat Andy."
"Here in Shanghai I've had the best moments of my career. I reached the final in 2007 (Masters Cup) and again this year. I hope to win it next year. I know it will be difficult but Shanghai is my second home," he added.
"I wanted to finish the year at three if possible. I haven't done that before. That still isn't complete. I'm still going to have to win some more matches to do that.
"But the last three weeks have been very good. I've had a good mindset and fought really hard in all the matches. Here I got a bit tired but I wanted to keep the run going. I'm really happy with the way I'm playing and hope I can keep it up for the rest of the year."
GeoSuper