Shanghai: Andy Murray overpowered Japan's Kei Nishikori 6-3, 6-0 in under an hour on Saturday to set up a Shanghai Masters final against David Ferrer.
Ferrer struggled to beat fellow Spaniard Feliciano Lopez 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-3, the third straight match the fifth-ranked player has come back to win after losing the first set.
The fourth-ranked Murray has now won 24 of his last 25 matches and is vying for his third tournament in as many weeks.
Nishikori was completely overwhelmed by Murray, winning just one point on the Scot's serve in the first set and six in the entire match.
The 21-year-old Nishikori has had the best week of his career, defeating two Top-20 players — Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France and Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine — and improving his ranking to around 32 next week, the highest ranking ever for a Japanese player on the ATP tour.
But he had no answer for Murray, who hit 20 winners to just eight unforced errors, whilebreaking Nishikori's serve five times.
Murray, the defending champion, has barely been tested this week. He received a bye in the first round, a walkover in the second and easily beat a 124th-ranked qualifier in the quarterfinals. The Scot dropped one set to the only seeded player he's faced, No. 13 Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland.
Ferrer, meanwhile, had to save three match points in his third-round win over Juan Carlos Ferrero and edged by Andy Roddick in the quarterfinals in a third-set tiebreaker.
He had a tough time with Lopez, too. Although Lopez is ranked 23 spots below Ferrer, he had a 6-1 record against his countryman on hard courts coming into the match and had eliminated three seeded players in straight sets to reach the semifinals.
"I know the record with him, it was bad, no? But I tried to refocus on my game," Ferrer said. "I had confidence with me, with my game."
Lopez was the more aggressive player in the first set, coming in behind his big serve and backhand slice repeatedly to finish off points at the net. After going down 4-1 in the tiebreaker, Lopez hit three big serves and a running backhand crosscourt winner to come back to take the set.
But Ferrer rebounded in the second, breaking Lopez in the third game when Lopez hit a slice backhand wide. He then got the decisive break in the third set when Lopez missed another shot badly wide while serving at 3-4.
"Maybe today I played the better match of this week," he said. "When I lost the first set, I tried to forget the tiebreak and I tried to focus again. I played better in the second and the third."
Murray and Ferrer are separated by just one place in the rankings, but the Scot has a formidable edge in Masters-level events. Murray has won seven Masters tournaments, while Ferrer is still looking for his first one.
Murray has also beaten Ferrer twice this year — last week in the semifinals of the Japan Open in Tokyo and in the semifinals of the Australian Open in January.
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