Just one more week remains before the finest season of Andy Murray’s career to date will be complete.
And there’s only one way the new world number one wants to end 2016 – with a bang.
Given his blistering form in recent months - winning his second Wimbledon and Olympic titles as well as consecutive titles in China, Shanghai, Vienna and Paris en route to topping the rankings – there can be no better finale to the campaign for Murray than with a win on home soil, as the ATP World Tour Finals get underway at London’s O2 on Sunday.
Victory in the capital would ensure the 29-year-old finishes 2016 as year-end number one, but he could face a possible dislodging from the top of the pile by Novak Djokovic, should the Serb go further in the tournament than Murray.
But confidence is at a peak for the Scot, who won his eighth title of the year at the Paris Masters last week, but he admits he could never have imagined to be named the world’s best just a few months ago.
“It obviously means a lot to me, because at this stage of my career, there aren’t many firsts anymore, so every time you achieve something new, it means a lot and something like that takes a lot of work,” said Murray, who became a father for the first time in February.
“It takes a lot of winning, and a lot of consistency to get there, and so it means a lot to me to get to number one.
“I never thought that I would get there but I kept working hard to try and do it, and these last few months have been the best of my career.
“After the French Open, it wasn’t something I was thinking about, it was so far away so I was just focusing on the next tournament, I wasn’t concentrating on the rankings.
“After Wimbledon and Cincinnati, I was starting to think that if I could have a good run until the end of season, then I would have a shot of getting to number one maybe in the early part of next year.
“But then it so happened that I ended up winning a lot of the tournaments and Novak didn’t play his best, and I managed to do it this year. It was a bit unexpected.”
Murray will get his ATP World Tour Finals campaign underway on Monday, when he faces Croatia’s Marin Cilic across the net in front of a home crowd.
Completing their group are Stan Wawrinka and Kei Nishikori and, while Murray hasn’t enjoyed the best of fortunes at the season finale in recent years, he’s sees no reason as to why this can’t be his time to shine.
“I’m not thinking too much about extending my lead at number one, to be honest, I want to play well in London and I want to try and finish the season strong,” he said.
“I haven’t played my best here over the last couple of years and my goal here is to try and play good tennis, I want to finish the year on a positive note after a really strong few months, and hopefully I can do that.
“The first few years I played here, I did play well. I got to the semi-finals one year and had a great match with Rafa [Nadal], I played really well and so I wasn’t disappointed.
“One of the years, I got knocked out in the group stages on percentage of games won or something like that, it was unbelievably close and no-one really knew what had happened.
“The last couple of years were tricky, I had the Davis Cup final coming up afterwards last year so I maybe didn’t prepare as well, but this year I’m coming in well prepared and there’s no reason why I can’t do well this year.
“It’s special to play my first match at number one [in Britain], I’m sure it will be a great atmosphere. It always has been every year that I’ve played, and I hope I do myself justice this week, play some good tennis and get a few wins.”
Sportsbeat 2016