Murray, Radwanska Win China Open Titles

October 10, 2016 | By New York Tennis Magazine Staff
Photo Credit: Lee Seidner

Andy Murray became the forth active player with 40 career titles on Sunday, knocking off Grigor Dimitrov 6-4, 7-6(2) to capture the China Open title in Beijing.

Murray came out firing as he broke Dimitrov in the match’s opening game, and would go on to serve out the rest of the set, helped out by 21 unforced errors off of Dimitrov’s racket.

The top-seeded Scot would break for a 3-2 lead in the second set and seemed to be on his way to a routine victory in the final. But Dimitrov put up resistance as Murray was serving for the match at 5-4, breaking to even things at 5-5, and eventually sending the second set into a tiebreak.

Murray was flawless in the breaker, going up a mini-break early and never looking back, wrapping up the straight set win in just under two hours.

“It was a great week for me. Today’s match was a very high-level match,” Murray said afterwards. “Grigor fought right to the end and made it extremely tough to finish it in two sets. It’s been an excellent week and I’m very happy with the way that I have played the last couple of matches. I will look forward to Shanghai now.”

Also in Beijing, Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska cruised past Great Britain’s Johanna Konta 6-4, 6-2 to win the China Open crown.

Radwanska was practically perfect all-tournament long as she went through the draw without dropping a set, and that continued into the final on Sunday.

Radwanska raced out to a 5-2 lead in the opening set, and even after Konta got one of the breaks back to trim the lead to 4-5, the third-seed was able to hold her off to take the opening set. She would then break early in the second set and never looked back,  closing out the straight-set win in one hour and 36 minutes.

“Every title means a lot, but especially here when you play against the best players in the world, in one of the biggest tournaments,” said Radwanska. “It’s top players from the first round on and I’ve been playing my best tennis all week so of course I’m very happy to win this tournament again, and this trophy is going to stay in a very special place.”

In Tokyo, Japan, Nick Kyrgios won the biggest title of his career, coming back from a set down to beat David Goffin 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 and win the Japan Open Tennis Championships.

“I played a very tough match against Gael Monfils yesterday, so it took me a little time to get into this match. David makes you feel like the court is very small. My serve got me out of trouble today,” said Kyrgios. “I enjoyed playing in front of the great crowd here. They’re very enthusiastic and very respectful. I have always loved playing in Japan.”


New York Tennis Magazine Staff
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