JAMIE Murray lost his chance to win the ATP Finals for the first time yesterday but the Scot believes he and Bruno Soares can go on to be the No 1 doubles pair in the world.
Having won all three of their round-robin matches at London’s O2, Murray and Soares were beaten 6-3, 4-6, 10-4 by Americans Mike Bryan and Jack Sock.
It was their third semi-final defeat in London in a row but having picked up two titles since Wimbledon, Murray said he and Soares had the ability to make the step up in 2019.
“Trying to be No 1…that's what we're here for,” Murray said. “We finished No 4, I think. On paper that's pretty good. We were never really contending for No 1. The guys that finished No 1 had an amazing start to the year. Our first half of the year wasn't that great in terms of results and putting points on the board.
“I put a lot into my tennis. I want to be the best. I want to finish at No 1 or compete for that. So from that aspect, it was probably a bit disappointing.
“But I think we played a lot of really good tennis the second half of the year. Our results showed that. We won a lot of matches. We played some good tennis here, winning three matches against three of the top eight teams in the world. I think that will give us hopefully good momentum going into next year.”
In the past, Murray has been quick to change partners when he has thought things were getting stale or that he could do better with someone else, but he and Soares have won three titles in each of their three years together, including two Grand Slam victories in 2016 and Murray said they were happy with the partnership.
“I think we know how good we can be when we're playing our level, doing our thing,” he said. “I think we showed that the second half of the year. We showed it here this week as well with the level of performance that we had. So I still think there's a lot left to kind of get out of the partnership, for sure.”
Murray will now head off for a holiday before training in Florida in December.
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