Andy Murray cruises past Grigor Dimitrov into semi-final – PTT Thailand Open 2011
Top seeded British Andy Murray tumbled over Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov in straight sets on Friday to aim for a top three year-end finish. He registered a 6-4, 6-4 victory over the 20-year-old Bulgarian to reach the last four at the PTT Thailand Open 2011, an ATP World Tour 250 series event held on the indoor hard courts in Bangkok, Thailand.
World number four, Murray outclassed the Bulgarian, ranked seventy-two spots below him in the South African Airways ATP World Tour rankings, in one and half hour. After earning success on their first duel, he not only took lead in the head-to-head series by 1-0 against Dimitrov but also inched towards the $608,500 prize money.
Murray confidently marched on the hard courts of Impact Arena and smoothly bagged entire serves after rolling the balls expertly onto the lines. He warded off all three breakpoints came across through brilliant return shots from his arsenal of skills and converted one out of two breakpoint opportunities to his advantage in the ninth game to clinch the opener with a 6-4 win.
24-year-old repeated his winning ways in the final set and held his opening serve in the second game to tie the scores at 1-1. Later the British lad bagged in remaining serves and cashed in on the only breakpoint opportunity to his advantage in the ninth game again to seal the set by winning six games to four.
Summing up the British performance, he hammered two aces and regardless of clobbering a lower first serve share of 53 percent as compared to Bulgarian’s 62 percent, Murray registered an impressive 74 percent win on it. He broke Dimitrov’s serve once in the end in both sets to triumph the match.
"I served well again," said Murray. "He started the match pretty well and once I served a couple of break points in my second service game, the momentum was then with me for a lot of the match. I did not give him too many opportunities on my serve. Returning is normally one of the strongest parts of my game, so when I served well I tended to put pressure on him and he missed a few shots at the end of both sets."
Up next for the highest ranked player of the tournament is the third seeded French Gilles Simon.
Simon bounced back to register a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over the German, Matthias Bachinger in one hour and thirty-six minutes on their first meeting.
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