Fernando Verdasco ended Andy Murray’s bid for a second Shenzhen Open crown on Friday. The Spanish veteran reached his first ATP World Tour hard-court semi-final for almost 12 months with a 6-4, 6-4 victory in one hour and 40 minutes.

Verdasco was solid on serve – dropping just five of his first-service points (27/32) and hitting 11 aces, including on match point – to beat Murray for just the third time in 16 FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings.

“Beating a player like Andy, it’s always a tough thing to do. You have to push yourself to the limit and you know that you have to play really, really good from the first point to the last point, because he’s always there, he’s always fighting… You really have to be focused the whole match,” Verdasco said.

The 34-year-old withstood two break points at 4-4, prior to breaking Murray’s serve in the next game. He opened up a 3-1 lead in the second set, and finished with 36 winners (14 off his forehand wing). Verdasco, who also beat Murray in the US Open second round, last reached a tour-level hard-court semi-final in October 2017 at the Intrum Stockholm Open (l. to Del Potro).

“First set I think I had quite a few chances. Didn’t take them. When he had his opportunities he played well,” Murray said. “In the second set, he deserved to win. He served well. He was very aggressive from the back of the court and didn’t make too many mistakes.”

Earlier in the day, Japanese qualifier Yoshihito Nishioka advanced to his second tour-level semi-final by beating Cameron Norrie of Great Britain 7-6(2), 6-2 in 90 minutes. Norrie lost just five of his first-service points, but won 11 of 28 points on his second serve.

Alex de Minaur is on a roll and closing in a spot at the Next Gen ATP Finals in November. The fast-rising 19-year-old moved to within one victory of a place in his third ATP World Tour final on Friday.

The seventh-seeded Australian overcame fourth seed Damir Dzumhur of Bosnia and Herzegovina 6-3, 7-6(7) in one hour and 43 minutes at the Shenzhen Open for a place in the semi-finals.

The Australian led 4-0 in the second set, but Dzumhur battled back from 1/5 in the tie-break and held one set point opportunity at 5/6.

“Everything was going according to plan, I was playing great tennis,” De Minaur told ATPWorldTour.com. “Then, I relaxed a bit and my intensity wasn’t as high as before, and he started to play better tennis. I got up 5/1 in the tie-break, almost home and dry, but he is such a good competitor he fought until the end.”

Should World No. 40 De Minaur beat France’s Pierre-Hugues Herbert, a 6-7(6), 7-6(1), 6-4 victor over Albert Ramos-Vinolas of Spain, he will rise to a new career-high in the ATP Rankings. He began the year at No. 208.

With a 21-17 match record in 2018, De Minaur has reached finals at the Sydney International (l. to Medvedev) and the Citi Open in Washington, D.C. (l. to A. Zverev). He is currently in fourth position in the ATP Race To Milan.

“I feel like I’m really solid out there, making a lot of balls and playing smart tennis,” said De Minaur. “I’m not making any unforced errors and I’m doing what I need to do.”

Doubles Final Set
Top seeds Ben McLachlan and Joe Salisbury will take on fourth seeds Robert Lindstedt and Rajeev Ram in the Shenzhen doubles final. McLachlan and Salisbury defeated third seed Roman Jebavy and Andres Molteni 6-4, 7-6(4) in 87 minutes, while Lindstedt and Ram beat Max Mirnyi and Philipp Oswald 7-6(4), 6-3 in 87 minutes.

Fabio Fognini continued his pursuit of a fourth tour-level title of the season on Friday, beating Matthew Ebden 6-4, 6-2 at the Chengdu Open.

The top seed, who has already lifted trophies in Sao Paulo, Bastad and Los Cabos this year, converted four of six break points to advance after 66 minutes. Competing at a career-high No. 13 in the ATP Rankings, Fognini improves to 39-18 this season. The 31-year-old is just three victories away from matching his best calendar year win total, achieved in 2013 (42-27).

Fognini will face Next Gen ATP Finals contender Taylor Fritz for a place in the championship match. Fritz notched his fifth victory in six matches at the event, beating countryman Sam Querrey 7-6(1), 7-5. Fognini, an eight-time tour-level titlist, and 21-year-old Fritz have never met at tour-level.

Did You Know?
Fognini will be competing in his seventh tour-level semi-final of the season in Chengdu (3-3). The Italian has won his past two semi-finals, en route to titles in Bastad and Los Cabos.

The subtleties of hard-court versus clay-court strategies are tough to pick up on with the naked eye. But not with a spreadsheet.

The way the ball interacts with the court is different for clay and hard, as well as how a player’s feet slide or stick to the surface. But what about serve patterns? Do players serve wide more on one side of the court than the other?

An Infosys Insights deep dive into the current Top 10 hitting first serves out wide in both the Deuce court and Ad court on clay and hard uncovers a clear strategic bias born from how the ball rebounds from each surface.

The data set comes from 2011-2018 ATP World Tour Masters 1000 events and the Nitto ATP Finals. The statistical comparison is a percentage of serving either wide, body or T.

DEUCE COURT WIDE – HARD COURT WINS
The Top 10, on average, served wide more in the Deuce court when playing on hard over clay. Marin Cilic was the leader on hard, serving 51.8 per cent of his Deuce court first serves out wide.

What’s interesting is that Cilic was also the leader serving wide on clay. In second place on both hard and clay was Novak Djokovic.

As you may expect, the only lefty in the data set, World No. 1 Rafael Nadal, was last in the Top 10 in choosing to serve wide on clay and hard on the Deuce court as it goes against his natural slice serve down the middle T.

Current Top 10: First-Serve Percentage Deuce Court Wide on Clay & Hard (Bold = Leader)

Overall, seven of the Top 10 served wide on the Deuce court more on hard than clay. The Top 10 average was 45.7 per cent for hard and 44.5 per cent on clay – a difference of 1.2 percentage points.

AD COURT WIDE – CLAY COURT WINS
Roger Federer led the Top 10 in serving wide more on clay than down the T, directing 56.7 per cent of his first serves off the court to begin the point. Federer was followed by Dominic Thiem (55.4%) and Nadal (52.2%). Thiem was the hard court leader serving wide, doing it 53.6 per cent of the time.

Juan Martin del Potro had the biggest overall adjustment in serve location from hard to clay, with more sliders out wide in the Deuce court on hard, and more heavy first serves (power + kick) out wide in the Ad court on clay.

Del Potro Serve: Wide Serves
Deuce Court = 38.8% hard / 33.3% clay (5.5 percentage point difference)
Ad Court = 39.2% hard / 47.4% clay (8.2 percentage point difference)

Current Top 10: First-Serve Percentage Ad Court Wide on Clay & Hard. (Bold = Leader)

The average difference for the Top 10 was only 1.2 percentage points in the Deuce court between hard and clay, but that jumped up to a 3.3 percentage-point difference in the Ad court. Eight of the Top 10 served more out wide in the Ad court on clay than on hard.

The Deuce court wide serves by the right-handed players (nine of 10 in the data set) would be hit with both power and slice to drag the opponent off the court. The Ad court wide serves are different, as they are struck with more of a mix of power and kick, using the small granules of clay like sandpaper to gain maximum friction, and therefore jump, on the ball.

These small adjustments may escape our focus when we sit on the side of the court and watch a match, but make perfect strategic sense once we assign a percentage to them.

Andy Murray might be lacking match experience and still have an ATP Ranking south of 300. But the Scot has not forgotten how to beat Belgian David Goffin.

Murray, in the biggest win of his comeback so far, swept past the top seed and defending champion 6-3, 6-4 on Thursday at the Shenzhen Open. The former World No. 1 improved to 6-0 against Goffin, No. 11 in the ATP Rankings, and earned his first Top 15 victory since the 2017 Roland Garros, when he beat then-No. 9 Kei Nishikori.

“I felt like in terms of the way I hit the ball, it was the best I’ve played, and I think I knew that I was going to have to hit the ball very well if I wanted to win,” Murray said. “I love the conditions that we play in. Usually it’s quite humid, and the courts are a little bit faster than what we usually play on the tour. The conditions that I like are fast courts with slow balls, and with the humidity, that slows the ball down a little bit. I feel like I’m able to control the ball very well here.”

Murray, in his second quarter-final of 2018 (Washington), will face Spain’s Fernando Verdasco, who beat Taro Daniel of Japan 3-6, 6-2, 7-5. The Brit owns a 13-2 advantage in his FedEx ATP Head2Head series with Verdasco, but the Spanish left-hander beat Murray the last time they played, during the second round of the US Open.

Murray broke for a 4-1 lead in the opener against Goffin and served out the set to 30. In the second, the Scot was in the zone, breaking during his first three opportunities and leading 5-1.

But Goffin, who won two titles during the Asian swing last year (Shenzhen, Tokyo), fought back. He broke when Murray first attempted to serve out the match during the eighth game and had three more break opportunities in the 10^th game before Murray closed out the second-round contest.

“I know David’s been struggling a little bit with his serve, with his shoulder the last month, month and a half. So I was able to get a lot of returns back in play, put a lot of pressure on his service games. I served pretty well myself,” Murray said.

The 31-year-old Murray, No. 311 in the ATP Rankings, underwent hip surgery on 8 January and was playing only his 11^th match of the season (7-4). He has already announced that next week’s China Open in Beijing will be his final tournament of 2018.