Federer and Murray into Toronto final

Roger Federer and Andy Murray will go head to head in the ATP Rogers Cup final on Sunday after both won pulsating semi-finals to oust the top two seeds in Toronto.

Third seed Federer battled through a topsy-turvy encounter with second seed Novak Djokovic to prevail 6-1 3-6 7-5 – and take over the world number two spot from the Serbian.

That ensured the championship match in Canada will be a repeat of this year’s Australian Open final, with fourth seed Murray having earlier ousted world number one and top seed Rafael Nadal.

Just as he had done in his quarter-final win over Tomas Berdych on Friday, Federer came out of the blocks quickly on Saturday.

He breezed through his first service game and then took advantage of two forehand errors to break Djokovic at the first opportunity.

The next three games went with serve before Federer broke again to establish a 5-1 cushion after a sixth game which saw six deuces, before comfortably holding serve to clinch the opening set.

The second set continued in much the same vein, with Djokovic’s forehand misfiring and Federer capitalising to take the first two games.

However, the Serbian was not about to give up the world number two ranking without a fight.

A fortunate net cord helped Djokovic get back into a position to hold serve from 0-30, and he continued the momentum into the following game where he made the most of his first break point to draw level at 2-2.

The second seed edged a marathon seventh game before breaking Federer to go 5-3 up and giving himself the chance to serve for the set – which he duly took to square the match.

Federer regrouped at the start of the decider and looked to have turned match back in his favour when he broke Djokovic’s serve in game four and then held to go 4-1 up.

However, once again Djokovic showed his battling qualities and reeled off three straight games thanks to some ferocious groundstrokes to get back to 4-4.

The 16-time grand slam champion was not going to let Djokovic have it all his own way, though, and stopped the rot to move 6-5 up before converting his first match point when his opponent netted a forehand.

Defending champion Murray earlier overpowered Nadal 6-3 6-4 in one hour and 44 minutes to exact a measure of revenge for his Wimbledon semi-final defeat to the Spaniard.

Murray, who on Friday crushed in-form David Nalbandian, bringing the Argentinian’s 11-game winning streak to a shuddering halt, broke serve once in the first set and twice in the second, in which he immediately reasserted his authority after Nadal had threatened to mount a comeback.

The 23-year-old, who has preserved his world number four ranking by reaching the final, could only manage 46% of first serves, but more than matched the two-time Wimbledon champion for power and energy.

He broke for first time to go 5-3 up in the opener and then held his serve in emphatic fashion, three straight aces putting him 40-0 up, to see out the set.

The Scot broke again to go 2-1 up in the second set, but a huge Nadal forehand gave the Spaniard two chances to break back and level at 3-3.

Murray saved the first break point only to have no answer to another booming Nadal forehand.

The world number one had points to break for a second time but Murray dug deep to make it 4-4 and then established a 40-0 lead in the ninth game, duly breaking and them serving out the match.

The Scot hailed his quarter-final performance against Nalbandian as the best he had played since reaching the Australian Open final in January – but claimed his performance to see off Nadal was even better.

“Today I think was better. To win against him (Nadal) in the first big hard-court tournament was a big boost for confidence,” he said on Sky Sports 4.

“I obviously played very well, didn’t make too many errors and dictated a lot of points from the back of the court.”