Well, this was a sloppy match.

When Murray stepped on the court against Nadal last week in Tokyo, he had the courage of his convictions.  Murray knows that, against Nadal, he has to hit well.  When the final shot hit wide and Murray had completed the 6-0 set, Murray fans must have felt elated at his form.  Clearly, Murray at his best can hit amazing shots.  But to expect that form day-in and day-out?  If Murray could hit like that every match, he’d be number 1, no doubt.

Against a player like Ferrer, Murray second guesses himself.  If Murray’s shots are going awry, he dials back the pace.  So he reserves the fireworks for Nadal.

These two had played last week and Murray clocked Ferrer breaking him twice both in the first and second set.  Ferrer decided he would play a bit more aggressive this time around.  All week, his serve was spot on.  Against Roddick, Ferrer actually out-aced his big serving opponent.  He used big serves to extricate himself out of match points against Juan Carlos Ferrero.

As it is, Ferrer already hits pretty aggressive.  He uses his speed and his steadiness to move his opponents around and wants to control the point with his forehand.  He’s like Nadal-lite.  He lacks the immense topspin of Nadal and his pace.  But he works hard to use his forehand to good effect.  Against players like Lopez or Roddick who lack the pace off both wings, Ferrer is often able to play the majority of his shots with his forehand.  Indeed, Ferrer hardly hit anything else against Lopez because he could get sliced replies off the Lopez backhand.  Against Murray, who has one of the best backhands in the world, Ferrer had to play far more backhands.  It’s not that Ferrer’s backhand is bad, by any stretch of the imagination, but that his forehand does the damage.  Ferrer rarely hits backhand winners, but he moves the ball well with the backhand and it’s not a huge liability, just a shot that he can’t dictate nearly as well.

With Ferrer playing aggressive and Murray slightly off his game, the play became a touch sloppy.  Perhaps the Nadal match or even last week’s Ferrer match spoiled us, but tennis is generally still a game of errors, and so it shouldn’t be a surprise that long rallies often do end in errors.  It’s one thing if the error is forced, but many of these errors were unforced.  Both players hit some 30 errors in the match.

Murray broke Ferrer early in the first set in a long game and it looked like Murray would have his way, but in his next serve game, Murray made a few too many errors while Ferrer kept aggressive.  Murray was immediately broken back.  The two basically held serve until 5-all when Murray got a gift of a game where Ferrer made a bunch of errors and gave the break to Murray who served out the set.  The key difference was Murray’s serve which allowed him to win cheap points more easily than Ferrer.

The second set went, more or less, like the first.  Murray again broke early, but played a sloppy followup game to give the break back.  Murray, however, did get one more break and was threatening a second break.  Ferrer held firm to prevent the double-break forcing Murray to serve out the match.  Murray got down 0-30 early, but hit a few big serves to get himself out of trouble and eventually won with a winner hit on the baseline.

Final score: 7-5, 6-4.

As good as David Ferrer is, it goes to show how hard it is to win a Masters 1000 title.  Ivan Ljubicic needed 4 times to finally win his first Masters 1000 back in 2010, several years after his best years.  Ferrer has only reached 3 Masters 1000 finals all within the last 2 years.  Last year, he reached the finals of Rome losing to Rafa, then he reached the finals of Monte Carlo this year, also losing to Rafa.  The Shanghai final was his third Masters 1000 final.

With this win, Murray has won his 8th Masters 1000 title and his second of the year, matching his results from last year.  He is tied with Thomas Muster for Masters 1000 title and just passed Michael Chang who had 7 Masters titles.

More importantly, Murray becomes number 3 in the world.  It’s not like Murray has never been number 3.  He did move past Nadal in 2009 when Nadal lost early in the French and skipped Wimbledon.  Indeed, Murray even briefly reached number 2 because Djokovic was also off his game.   However, Murray ended 2009 at number 4.  Murray also briefly flirted with number 3 in 2010, but again, he finished the year at number 4.

Being so late in the year, Murray’s number 3 is likely to hold to the end of the year.  Although Murray is on a hot streak, having won 3 tournaments in a row for the first time ever, this is only part of the story why he’ll probably end the year at number 3.  The other part of the story is the man he displaced, Roger Federer.

With this win, Murray will be a scant 45 point ahead of Roger Federer.  And that had more to do with Roger failing to defend finalist points as it did Murray winning the title.  Murray didn’t really “gain” ground because he was “merely” defending his title.  So his point total stayed the same.  But Murray will continue to gain ground.  Federer won’t defend Stockholm and so he’ll lose 250 points more against Murray.  Federer only played Stockholm so he could move a title ahead of Pete Sampras at his home tournament of Basel.

Federer’s expected return is Basel, but Djokovic is likely to mark his return at Basel as well.  This means Federer’s work is cut out for him.  To be fair, both players will be returning back to play and that usually means a fair bit of rust, but both players have shown their ability to come back from long periods off.  If Federer loses to Djokovic at Basel, he’ll lose about 140 more points to Murray.  Now, Murray is likely to give up 45 points at Valencia because he’s not scheduled to play Valencia, a tournament Murray normally plays.

And he’s almost guaranteed not to play Valencia this year due to the success in the Asian swing.  This means two weeks off (this week and the week after) and Murray should return in Paris, then a week off, then the year-end championship in London.  During this period, Murray is defending quarterfinal points at Paris and semifinal points at the World Tour Final.  This is 580 points of which he’s likely to earn a reasonable chunk back.  He doesn’t even need the full 580 points.

The reason is Roger Federer has to defend 2360 points in roughly the same time period.  This includes 1500 points at the year-end championship, 500 points from Basel, and 360 points in Paris.   The one he’s most likely to defend is Paris.  Basel will be challenging primarily because of Djokovic.  But basically, Federer can’t afford a misstep.

The trick part is defending the ATP World Tour Finals.  The only way Federer can defend this is to win every match he plays like he did last year.  Every victory in the round-robin is worth about 200 points.  Since Federer went 3-0 in round robin play, he picked up “bonus” points for those victories.  Murray, by contrast, won 2 round robin matches to reach the semis and picked up “only” 400 points, but no more since he lost in the semis.

Murray will lead Federer by about 300 points after Stockholm concludes.  He will drop about 50 points by not defending Valencia, so he’ll have a 250 points lead.  Murray only needs to get to the quarterfinals of Paris to defend those points.  Should he do that, Murray could even only win one match in the year-end championship and still hold that number 3 spot, and that’s even assuming Federer went undefeated at the year-end championship.  Should Federer come up short in any way in the year-end championship, he’ll give up more points to Murray.  And the odds are, he probably will falter somewhere between now and then, and even if he miraculously doesn’t, he needs Murray to play awful between now and then.  If Murray wins Paris, for example, he’ll put way too much distance between him and Federer and will clinch at number 3 regardless of how Federer plays.

Nadal is expected to play Paris and London which he skipped last year.  Murray will do the same.   Federer will play Basel, Paris, and London.  Djokovic is expected to play the same tournaments as Federer.

It’s heading to the end of the year!  Congrats to Murray on his Shanghai win.