Murray caps ‘great week’ by beating Federer in Shanghai

Andy Murray reflected on a “great week” after storming past Roger Federer 6-3 6-2 to win the Shanghai Masters on Sunday and claim his second title of the year.

The result marks Murray’s eighth triumph against the world No3 after the Scot got the better of Federer in Toronto earlier this year.

Murray, who set the tone for the match by breaking the Federer in the opening game, stressed the importance of getting off to a good start against the 16-time grand slam champion.

“Against Roger you can’t let him get out in front,” he said. “You have to go after it early.”

“Obviously sometimes against Roger he’s going to be able to dictate points and you just have to hang in and I managed to do that.

“I returned his serve well tonight and got a lot of free points on my first serve and my second serve has improved so much since the start of the year that he wasn’t really able to take many chances on it.

“I’ve moved really well all week,” he added. “I still want to get a bit of endurance back but the speed was very good tonight. I hit a lot of great shots on the run and you need to come up with great shots against Roger if you want to beat him.

“It was a great week – I played some of my best tennis, especially tonight,” added the 23-year-old from Dunblane.

And Federer was quick to pay tribute to Murray’s impressive performances during the week after the match.

“He had an outstanding tournament,” said the 29-year-old. “It’s not easy to win these Masters 1000 tournaments. I know how tough they are to win so congratulations on a great effort.

“I couldn’t quite break through. Andy played great. He didn’t give me much and made me work extremely hard – going for big shots which I couldn’t pull off, which was unfortunate but I still had a great tournament.”