MURRAY SIZZLES AS LONDON NEARS

Andy Murray will head into the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals as arguably the hottest player on the planet after winning three consecutive titles during the Asian swing in Bangkok, Tokyo and Shanghai. He has won 25 of his past 26 matches.

Second seed Andy Murray won his third ATP World Tour title in three weeks in Asia as he retained his Shanghai Rolex Masters crown with a 7-5, 6-4 victory over third seed David Ferrer on Sunday.

Victory will see the 24-year-old Murray overtake Roger Federer at World No. 3 in the South African Airways 2011 ATP Rankings. It will be the first time since 7 July, 2003, when he won his first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon, that Federer has ranked outside the Top 3.

"My goal for the last three-four months after the US Open was to try to finish as high as possible and win as many matches as I could," said Murray. "It's obviously been a great start. But I'm still not guaranteed to finish at No. 3. I'm still going to have to win some more matches. But if you finish in front of Federer in a year, then there's not many people the last five, six, seven years that have been able to say that. So that's obviously a nice thing if I can do it."

Murray has now won 25 of his past 26 matches. The Scot came into Shanghai on the back of title runs at the PTT Thailand Open in Bangkok (d. Young) and the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships in Tokyo (d. Nadal), and prior to a semi-final loss at the US Open (l. to Nadal) had triumphed at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati (d. Djokovic).

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