Andy Murray beat Tomas Berdych in two sets, 6-4 6-4, to reach the Miami Open final.
Victory levelled Murray's head-to-head record against Berdych at 6-6 and clinched a showdown for the title against either world number one Novak Djokovic or John Isner.
Djokovic beat Murray in the semi-final at Indian Wells last week and the British number one admitted he would need to improve significantly to compete should they meet again on Sunday.
The first three games went against the serve before Murray found his rhythm and began to dominate Berdych, ending the first set having hit 77 per cent of his first serves and won 80 per cent of those points.
A crushing return took him 0-30 up as Berdych served to begin the second set, and the Czech then dumped an easy volley into the net and double-faulted to gift Murray the break.
Berdych won a brilliant rally to get to 30-30 in Murray's next service game and it was the Scot's turn to double-fault at a key moment, setting up deuce. A sublime lob put Murray back on top but he was unable to close the game out and again, the players had traded breaks at the start of the set.
And again it became three in a row as some dominant returns from Murray took him 2-1 up and he was rarely troubled from there.
Murray told Sky Sports 3: "I did most things well, there's not a lot I could complain about.
"My second serve was much better in the second set, I served well on the big points and got a lot of free points behind my serve.
"I dictated a lot of the points from the baseline and that's important because when he's inside the baseline and controls points, he's a very powerful guy."
Asked what he would have to do in a possible match against Djokovic, he began: "Play better than I did last week, that would be a good start!
"I know I need to play high-level tennis, he returns well so I need to get the balance right of being patient but dictating points when I get the opportunity.
"I'll also be aggressive against the second serve, I'll be inside the baseline attacking - that's something I've done well this week and didn't do at Indian Wells, so that's something different.
"And just hopefully play a cleaner match. But I've played well this week, much better than I did at Indian Wells."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article