Andy Murray boosted his chances of making the ATP World Tour Finals on Sunday when he defeated Spain’s David Ferrer 5-7, 6-2, 7-5 to claim the Austrian Open for his 30th career title.
The hard-fought victory in two hours, 41 minutes sent the Scot to eighth spot in the points race for the London season-ending finale, which begins in three weeks.
The 27-year-old Murray is the third Briton to clinch the Vienna crown after Greg Rusedski and Tim Henman won back-to-back in 1999 and 2000. He received €94,500 (Dh442,860) in prize money.
Murray and Ferrer were the No 2 and No 1 seeds, respectively, in Vienna and were both playing the event on a wild card.
They were just a few points apart this week in the race to grab one of the last three places at the eight-man season finale but victory has pushed Murray's advantage over Ferrer to 110 points.
"It always feels great to win a title," said Murray, who lost to Ferrer in three sets at the Shanghai Masters last week.
“This was an extremely difficult match. He deserved to win the first set, I deserved the second and the third could have gone either way. I’m lucky I just managed to pull it off.”
The final set featured seven breaks of serve and Murray took victory when a serve was ruled an ace by electronic line calling.
Ferrer and Murray will both head to Valencia in Spain for next week’s competition.
Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic have already booked their places for London. Murray trails US Open finalist Kei Nishikori and Stockholm winner Tomas Berdych.
“It’s the same for both of us, we’ve had very close matches,” Murray said. “Whoever qualifies for London will deserve it.”
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