NOT since Rage Against the Machine took on Joe McElderry has there been such a battle to be named Christmas No 1. Having supplanted Novak Djokovic at the top of the tennis rankings, Andy Murray is feeling on top of the world as the 2016 ATP World Tour finals get under way but the Scot is well are he may have to win this event to fend off the Serb and ensure he remains the sport's top dog as the New Year begins.
While the 29-year-old from Dunblane hasn't discerned too many differences since becoming as world No 1 on Monday, it was just about possible to detect an extra sheen of confidence, a kind of Ready Brek glow, about the Scot as he met the media in Greenwich yesterday.
"It feels good but I don’t feel any different this week than I did the week before when I get up in the morning and stuff," said Murray. "When I woke up on Monday morning, I felt just the same. Although maybe when you step on the court you have a little bit more confidence and feel a bit better about yourself when you are hitting balls."
Murray doesn't have many worlds left to conquer but the tour finals is one of them. Considering how staggeringly consistent he has been over the last decade, it seems startling to relate that he has never got beyond the semi-finals here, even if he did appear on finals day in 2012 as a late replacement for the injured Roger Federer.
He has never tackled the event quite like this, though. Twelve months previously Murray was prioritising his clay court work ahead of Great Britain's Davis Cup final with Belgium, but his eighth attempt at the event comes fresh from wins in his last four tournaments, having formally got his hands on the World No 1 trophy at the launch event for this tournament on the Cutty Sark on Thursday evening.
The tournament feels like a different place this year, although ticket sales are thought to be holding up well despite the absence of the big name box office of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. The former is home in Mallorca injured and the latter's ranking has slumped to the unheard of depths of World No 16. In there place. In there place come two first time qualifiers in the form of Austria's Dominic Thiem and Gael Monfils of France. They, and the same Milos Raonic who inadvertantly handed No 1 status to Murray when he withdrew from the pair's Paris semi-final is all that lies in the wake of Djokovic, with Murray facing a far sterner test in the form of Stan Wawrinka, Kei Nishikori and Marin Cilic.
On the plus side, the court surface has been changed, and is playing far quicker, while Murray has also taken the decision to base himself at the family home in Oxshott, Surrey, rather than a London hotel to give him more time with his eight-month old daughter Sophia. Despite a week of fevered pre-amble, the Scot - perhaps wisely - declined the chance to watch the Scotland football take on England, although Jamie, the boys' dad Willie, and Jamie's coach Alan McDonald were all at Wembley. It all reinforces the Scot's single-minded approach to continue making improvements, a point rammed home in a telephone conversation with his coach Ivan Lendl within minutes of him becoming World No 1 in Paris on Saturday.
"There has been a couple of years when I wish I could have done a little bit better but like last year it was difficult to judge because I prepared for the tournament by practising on clay which isn’t the best way to prepare for an event like this," he added. "This year I’ve obviously had a good run in Paris which a lot of years I haven’t done. I’ve never stayed at home during the tournament, I've always stayed at the hotel, so I'm doing that a bit differently.
"I don’t really feel any different coming to the tournament this year from the other years that I played except that maybe this year I’m a bit better prepared than the last couple of seasons," said Murray. "But, look, I’ve said these last whole last few months that I expect Novak is going to start playing his best tennis again. Obviously these last couple of months he hasn’t but before then he’d been playing great for like … not months, years. I’m sure for him it’s not too much to worry about and I imagine shortly he’ll be back to playing his best tennis and he obviously played extremely well here in the past. He's won here the past four years so there’s no reason to think that he won’t have a really good tournament here."
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