Andy Murray vs. Rafael Nadal live stream and ATP World Tour Finals Match Preview
Crunch Sports Staff
in Tennis 18 Nov 2020
Andy Murray (credit: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Andy Murray vs. Rafa Nadal takes place today at the 2015 ATP World Tour Finals in London.
The match is scheduled to start at 14:00 GMT.
In the UK, the match airs live on Sky Sports/Sky Sports 3 HD (and online here), while you can also watch and bet on live tennis with bet365 here:
Preview:
Twelve months ago, Murray’s Barclays ATP World Tour Finals experience ended in ignominy when he was trounced 6-0, 6-1 by Roger Federer. Can he avoid a similar fate at the hands of Nadal when they face off in round-robin action today?
Murray’s situation is, of course, rather different than it was last year, as he has pointed out himself. A troubled 2014 season saw him only secure qualification for the World Tour Finals with a late-season surge, playing six consecutive weeks of tennis and arriving in London exhausted, but this year has been shiningly successful, with two Masters Series titles and a runner-up finish at the Australian Open among the highlights of a year which has seen him win 69 matches. Moreover, the forthcoming Davis Cup final in Ghent has caused Murray to reshuffle his schedule and training practices.
Neither Murray nor Nadal have ever won the World Tour Finals, Murray reaching the semifinals in 2008, 2010 and 2012 while Nadal finished runner-up in 2010 and 2013. But Nadal, too, might be arriving fresher to the World Tour Finals than he ever has before. The Spanish player, who missed the event in 2014 due to appendix issues, has played a full schedule in 2015 but he hasn’t won as many matches as he might normally expect, going 59-19 to Murray’s 69-12. Nadal’s struggles have been well-documented as he failed to win a Grand Slam or Masters Series title for the first time in many years, but it seems now that after a year of false starts, things might finally be moving in the right direction for the 14-time Grand Slam champion. He has had a string of solid results since losing in the third round of the US Open – runner-up in Beijing and Basel, semifinalist in Shanghai, quarterfinalist in Paris – and no bad losses, falling to Novak Djokovic in Beijing, Federer in Basel, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Shanghai and Stan Wawrinka in Paris, that last defeat a two-tie break one.
Nadal avenged that defeat to Wawrinka in his opening match at the World Tour Finals, making a poor start when he dropped serve to love but bouncing back swiftly as Wawrinka increasingly fell apart. A threatened Wawrinka resurgence was nipped in the bud by a fantastic lob winner produced by Nadal on break point early in the second set and the Swiss player was barely a presence on the court by the end, his spirit thoroughly broken. It was another encouraging sign for Nadal, not so much that he had produced a moment of magic on a big point but that he was able to use it to swing the match so definitively in his direction.
A resurgent Nadal is, of course, not good news for Murray when it comes to this meeting. Nadal has generally had the best of Murray throughout their careers, leading the overall head-to-head 15-6, although remarkably they have only played four times since 2011, four matches which have been split evenly: 2-2. Murray won the last one, a 6-3, 6-2 demolition of Nadal in the final of the Madrid Masters which was one of the highlights of the British player’s season.
Murray and Nadal have played just once at the World Tour Finals, back in 2010 when Nadal defeated Murray in a semifinal clash settled only by a third-set tie break. Nadal has called indoor hard courts his ‘toughest surface’, but he’s had good results on them recently; he is also playing some significantly more aggressive tennis, and being effective at doing so, which again is not good news for Murray. If the world no. 2 returns much better than he did against Ferrer while serving well himself, he has a chance. If not, Nadal could get his first win against a top-3 opponent since last year’s French Open.
