Nadal blows Murray away in Indian Wells

Andy Murray admitted he was blown off course by the windy conditions as he crashed to a 6-1 6-2 defeat by Rafael Nadal in the final of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells last night.

The match was played in extremely windy conditions, with gusts of 40mph, and the British number one struggled with all parts of his game.

He was broken twice in each set as world number one Nadal coped much better with the conditions to ease to his second title of the year following January’s Australian Open success.

For Murray there were plenty of consolations; a third ATP Tour final of the season after victories in Doha and Rotterdam and plenty of ranking points to up the pressure on world number three Novak Djokovic.

The 21-year-old said: “I’d like to congratulate Rafa. He definitely deserved to win. He played great in difficult conditions.

“I haven’t played in conditions as windy as that for quite a long time. Rafa dealt with it very well. He hit the ball cleaner and just seemed to get himself in better positions than I did.

“You don’t necessarily want to be doing a whole lot of defending and running. You want to be in the best position possible to hit each ball, and I wasn’t. That’s why he managed to dictate most of the points.

“But I’ve had a great start to the year and hopefully I can keep it going.”

Looking ahead to next week’s Masters Series event in Miami, Murray added: “I got a lot of matches that I wasn’t necessarily expecting, so going into Miami I’m going to be better prepared than I thought.

“Obviously, today was not my best day but I’ll definitely get over it because I’m guessing I’m not going to play in those conditions each week.”

Murray went into the match on a high after another victory over Roger Federer in the semi-finals but he was on the back foot from the off.

He managed to hold on to his opening service game but from then on the first set slipped away quickly as Nadal reeled off five games in a row.

Murray seemed content to trade baseline shots with Nadal but could not match the Spaniard’s consistency.

In the second set he tried coming into the net on a number of occasions but the wind made volleying difficult and it was rarely a successful tactic.

Again he kept pace with Nadal at the start of the set but a break in the fifth game sealed his fate as the top seed cruised to his 13th Masters Series title.

The 22-year-old said: “Conditions today were really difficult but I had a good strategy and I played a really good match with those conditions.

“Probably Andy didn’t play his best because of the conditions but I played a really complete match. I was moving very well, I never stopped the legs during the whole match, and I think that was the key today.

“I don’t know if I was a little bit more prepared than him to play in these conditions. Maybe I accepted (the conditions) a little bit better than him.”

Nadal’s victory ensured Murray’s winning run against him ended at two, and he was delighted to rack up a sixth career success over the Scot.

“Andy was the only top player who I didn’t beat this year so it was important,” he added.