LONDON: Roger Federer joined Rafael Nadal in the final of the ATP World Tour Finals by beating Novak Djokovic 6-1, 6-4 Saturday. Federer picked his shots throughout the match, keeping Djokovic on the run and forcing the third-ranked Serb into errors on the long rallies. The 16-time Grand Slam champion will face the top-ranked Nadal in Sunday's final at the O2 Arena. After relentlessly running each other all over the court for more than three hours in a match that flip-flopped throughout, Nadal got the breaks he needed to beat Andy Murray 7-6 (5), 3-6, 7-6 (6). The top-ranked Spaniard, who won this year's US Open to complete a career Grand Slam, had to overcome a mid-match slump to reach the final of the ATP World Tour Finals for the first time. “Today I played one of the best matches of my career,” said Nadal, who has never won the season-ending event for the top eight players in the world. Both players looked unbeatable throughout the first set, which Nadal won in a tiebreaker despite a late surge from Murray. But Nadal started to falter after holding serve to lead 3-2 in the second. Murray won 17 of the next 23 points - and four straight games - to take the set and even the score. Nadal never looked as good after the mid-match slump, but he managed to break Murray to take a 2-1 lead in the third set. The Spaniard then had his first match point on Murray's serve while leading 5-3, but the fifth-ranked Briton managed to hold the game, break back to 5-5 and force the final tiebreaker. “I probably played one bad game the whole match, or maybe just a couple of bad points,” Murray said. “But, yeah, it was great tennis.” In the tiebreaker, Murray won the first three points - two of them on Nadal's serve - and looked like he was going to roll to victory. But Nadal clawed back to 4-4 before getting another match point at 6-5. Murray again saved that one, but he couldn't do anything about the final match point, which Nadal won with an inside-out forehand. Murray finished the match with 22 aces, but he also had 47 unforced errors to go along with his 53 winners. Overall, the Briton won 114 points in the match, five more than Nadal. In the first set, Nadal and Murray traded forehands and backhands but neither allowed the other even one break point. The second set started much the same, although Nadal did waste the first two break points of the match in the second game. Murray then broke serve to lead 4-3, and then broke again to take the set. “I played a great match today,” Murray said. “Whether it's the best match I played and lost, I don't know. But it was a great match.” In doubles, Daniel Nestor of Canada and Nenad Zimonjic of Serbia beat top-ranked Bob and Mike Bryan of the United States 6-3, 3-6, 12-10. Indian double specialist Mahesh Bhupathi partnered Belarus Max Mirnyi to reach the final with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Polish duo Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski.
