Murray, Federer advance to semis at ATP finals

LONDON (AP) — Roger Federer and Andy Murray easily secured spots in the semifinals of the ATP World Tour Finals on Thursday with straight-sets victories in their last round-robin matches.

Federer continued his dominance over Robin Soderling, beating the Swede 7-6 (5) 6-3 to earn top spot in Group B of the season-ending tournament. Murray followed up by recovering from a shaky start to beat David Ferrer 6-2, 6-2 to hand the Spaniard his third straight loss in the group phase.

Their semifinal opponents will be decided Friday, when the last round-robin matches in Group A are played.

Federer won his third straight group match and improved his career record against Soderling to 15-1, with his only loss to the Swede coming in this year’s French Open quarterfinals.

“(Soderling) always brings out something different every time he plays me, because he has to try different things,” Federer said. “I was able to handle it well, which was a very happy feeling for me to have.”

Federer’s victory meant Murray only had to win a set to clinch second place in the group. He took care of that in 31 minutes, recovering from going down 2-0 in the first set by playing nearly perfect tennis in winning the next seven games to take control of the match.

His only stumble came after breaking Ferrer for the fourth straight time to go up 1-0 in the second set. He was broken at love in the next game, shanking a forehand so badly on break point that the ball hit one of the big video boards hanging over the court.

But Ferrer seemed unable to muster up much energy knowing that he had already been eliminated, and Murray broke twice more for a 5-2 lead. He sealed the victory with an easy forehand winner at the net on his first match point.

The other group features Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Tomas Berdych and Andy Roddick, with all four still in contention for the semifinals ahead of the last round of matches on Friday.

In the doubles competition, top-ranked Bob and Mike Bryan of the United States reached the semifinals by beating Lukas Dlouhy of the Czech Republic and Leander Paes of India 6-3, 6-4. They were joined by Polish duo Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski, who won Group A after beating Jurgen Melzer of Austria and Philipp Petzschner of Germany 6-3, 7-6 (7).

Tags: sports, tennis, federer, murray, atp