ATP World Tour Finals: Resurgent Rafael Nadal looks sharp again after Andy Murray is forced to cut his hair on court

The handiwork might have helped the Scot’s vision, but it could not prevent a 6-4, 6-1 defeat which leaves him with work to do if he is to go through to Saturday’s semi-finals

Rafael Nadal, left, beat Andy Murray in straight-sets (Getty Images)

Rafael Nadal’s brilliance has probably left some of his rivals pulling their hair out but as far as anyone could remember this was the first time that an opponent gave himself a mid-match trim.

With hair getting in his eyes, Andy Murray pulled a pair of scissors out of his bag during a changeover early in the first set of his round-robin match against Nadal here at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. The handiwork might have helped the Scot’s vision, but it could not prevent a 6-4, 6-1 defeat which leaves him with work to do if he is to go through to Saturday’s semi-finals.

Murray will still qualify if he beats Stan Wawrinka in his concluding winner-takes-all round-robin match on Friday – the Swiss kept his own hopes alive and sealed Nadal’s qualification by beating David Ferrer 7-5, 6-2 – but this was a reminder of the continuing excellence of his fellow members of the “Big Four”, who have dominated the sport for the last decade.

The world No 2, who needs one more victory to guarantee holding that position at the end of the year, has won only two of his 11 matches this year against Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Nadal.

One of those two victories was against Nadal in the Madrid Masters final in May, which was Murray’s first win over the 29-year-old Spaniard on the latter’s favourite surface. However, the Nadal he faced here on an indoor hard court – which in theory should have favoured the Scot – was a very different player to the man who was struggling so much in the first eight months of this year.

Following a difficult second half of 2014, when he was troubled by illness and injury, Nadal failed to get beyond the quarter-finals of any of the four Grand Slam tournaments – this is the first year since 2004 that he has not won one of them – while the only titles he has won were in comparatively minor events at Buenos Aires, Stuttgart and Hamburg.

However, his form has picked up significantly in recent weeks, despite the fact that he has been playing on his least favoured surface. This was arguably his best result since his victory over Djokovic in the 2014 French Open final. Until this match, the highest ranked player Nadal had beaten in the last 17 months was Wawrinka, the world No 4.

Nadal made just 12 unforced errors (to Murray’s 29), had his opponent scurrying to all corners of the court with some exquisitely angled shots and played with the confidence and self-belief that were missing from his game for so long.

“This year I have been more worried about myself than the opponents for a lot of matches,” Nadal said. “Today I felt free. I enjoyed myself on court.”

Murray, meanwhile, performed below the high standards he has set this year. “I didn’t help myself out there today,” he said, lamenting in particular his failure to put more than 43 per cent of his first serves in court. “That’s not good enough against someone as good as Rafa.”

The Scot said Nadal had hit the ball extremely well from the back of the court, especially in the second set. “He’s won way more matches the last few months,” Murray said. “He’s come back from tight situations, which is a sign he is getting back to where he wants to be.”

From 4-4 in the first set Nadal won eight of the last nine games. As he won the opening set and immediately took charge of the second, the world No 5 won 16 out of 18 points. The first set took nearly an hour, but the second just 34 minutes.

The curious incident of the haircut came when Murray trailed 2-1 in the opening set. He was reluctant to talk about it afterwards and was a little tetchy when asked whether the episode might have been an indication of the fact that he was preoccupied with next week’s Davis Cup.

“I don’t know why such minor things make such a big deal to you guys,” Murray said at his post-match press conference. “I had some hair in my eye and I just wanted to get rid of it. That literally took two seconds. That was it. It was nothing to do with next week or anything to do with the outcome of this match.”

The incident certainly reinforced the impression that the state of his hair is never high on Murray’s agenda. He once emerged at the Monte Carlo Masters with especially close-cropped hair after failing to adjust the settings on a pair of clippers that he had borrowed. On another occasion he conducted a poll among his fans to decide what sort of haircut he should have next.

Nadal expressed surprise at Murray’s DIY trim, saying he would have expected the Scot to have been aware of the stray hairs in practice. “That was not the right time to know that,” Nadal smiled. “But it was a good solution.”