Top-ranked Andy Murray is in Abu Dhabi this week with Rafael Nadal for the Mubadala Tennis Championships. After an exhausting 2016 season that saw him chip away at an 8,000 point lead built up by then-reigning No. 1 Novak Djokovic, the Scot, who won the year-end ATP World Tour Finals in London this year with a convincing win over the Serb, will play one final tournament.
In the United Arab Emirates with some of the ATP’s top-10 players – most prominently among them Nadal, Murray will play at the exhibition-only, non-ATP tournament, where he is the defending champion.
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Nadal and Murray, playing at the launch of the event, are much used to different surfaces – but this was neither Nadal’s favoured clay nor Murray’s pet surface, grass, but roadway. The pair, hitting it out on the picturesque island of Al Maryah, still managed to look at ease on the strange surface.
Also at the event are Tomas Berdych, David Goffin, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Milos Raonic, with Nadal due to play his first match, against Tomas Berdych, tonight. The Spaniard has won three titles here in the past.
Murray will have a first-round bye here, which means that he will play the victor of today’s first match between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and David Goffin tomorrow for a place in the finals, to be played on the 31st of December.
Both players are prior winners at the Mubadala Championships!
All the players participating here are, as of now, due to participate in the Australian Open in two weeks’ time, while Murray will next head to Qatar prior to the Australian tennis leg in early January.
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