Madrid, Oct 20: Juan Carlos Ferrero beat Nicolas Massu to win the Madrid Masters. Spanish top seed Juan Carlos Ferrero scored a crushing 6-3 6-4 6-3 victory over Nicolas Massu of Chile on Sunday (October 19) to win the Madrid Masters and strengthen his position as world number one. Massu had been in exceptional form throughout the week, beating the likes of Gustavo Kuerten and Andy Roddick on his way to the final, but he was outplayed from first to last. Victory for Ferrero extended his lead over Roddick and Switzerland's Roger Federer in the ATP entry list and took him ahead of the American in the ATP Champions Race with just three weeks to go in the season. Ferrero broke Massu in his first service game and never looked back, reeling off a series of forehand winners to take the first set with real elan. Massu lost his first service game in the second set and Ferrero built on that 2-0 advantage to take it with a minimum of fuss. Ferrero repeated the trick in the third set, breaking early on, and extended his lead to 4-1 with another break. Massu broke back for 2-4 and had a sniff of a chance to come back in game eight, with a couple of loose Ferrero serves handing the Chilean two break points at 15-40.


The Spaniard saved the first with impeccable court craft and a big serve dashed Massu hopes of taking the second.


Ferrero, by now in sensational form, broke Massu in the next game to complete victory in two hours 30 minutes, the Chilean putting a volley long on the first match-point.


Bureau Report