Murray makes final
New York — Dealing with 20 mph (32 kph) wind that blew a changeover chair onto the U.S. Open court on one point and yanked his hat off during another, Andy Murray navigated his way into his fifth Grand Slam final.
Now he’ll try to win his first Grand Slam title — and first for any British man in 76 years.
Adapting to the conditions far better than his opponent did, Olympic champion Murray came back to beat mistake-prone Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic 5-7, 6-2, 6-1, 7-6 (7) in a rain-delayed and wind-swept semifinal on Saturday.
“It was brutal,” Murray said about his 3-hour, 58-minute victory.
Hard to describe. You had to focus for every single point.”
women’s
final moved
Defending champion Novak Djokovic and fourth-seeded David Ferrer played the other semifinal straight afterwards.
Showers in the nighttime forecast prompted the tournament to postpone the women’s final between Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka until Sunday.
It will be the fourth time in five years that the U.S. Open women’s championship was pushed back to Sunday. The men’s final has been moved from Sunday to Monday in each of the past four years, and that remained a possibility — if Djokovic and Ferrer weren’t able to complete their semifinal.
The U.S. Open is the only Grand Slam tournament that schedules the men’s semifinals on Saturday. Next year, for the first time, a day off will be inserted between the semifinals and final, either by shifting the semis to Friday or by changing the title match to Monday.
This event is the first major since the 2004 French Open with neither Roger Federer nor Rafael Nadal in the semifinals. Federer was beaten by Berdych in the quarterfinals, while Nadal did not enter the field, sidelined by a partially torn tendon in his left knee.
Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have combined to win 29 of the last 30 major titles, a string that began at the 2005 French Open.
The third-seeded Murray will get yet another chance to put his name on that list. The last major singles trophies for a British man were won by Fred Perry at Wimbledon and the U.S. Championships in 1936. /AP
