• World No1 beats Croat 6-3, 6-2 as he bids to win title at 10th attempt • Murray will play Kei Nishikori in second round-robin match on Wednesday

Andy Murray, whose glorious summer run Marin Cilic interrupted in Cincinnati, drowned the Croat in quality power across the lightning quick court on Monday night to establish a sound footing to win the ATP World Tour Finals for the first time at his 10th attempt.

The world No1 beat Cilic 6-3, 6-2 in an hour and a half, and plays Kei Nishikori in the second round-robin match of his group on Wednesday. Beyond that on Friday lies Stan Wawrinka, who lost to Nishikori in the afternoon – and the Swiss does not look in any great shape to stop him reaching the semi-finals. If Murray does make the last four, he is within touching distance of finishing the year as the world No1 ahead of Novak Djokovic.

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“It’s one of the best matches I’ve played here over the years. I’ll try to keep going to the end,” Murray told the London crowd afterwards. “Thank you for the incredible atmosphere here. I really appreciate it. I keep working hard and hope you enjoy it. When you start winning matches, you gain confidence. On break points I was a little bit more solid.”

Murray and Cilic traded breaks at the start of the evening match – Murray’s sloppy concession wholly unnecessary – before the Scot worked his way back to dominance with a series of spirit-breaking groundstrokes, deep and wide, to take the set in 46 minutes.

At the start of the second, Murray saved break point with a superb ace. No doubt buoyed by his first win over Djokovic in 15 starts in Paris last weekend, Cilic was now serving with venom. A second-serve ace got him to 30-40 in the fifth game but Murray stuck the dagger in with a towering forehand from mid-court for another breakthrough.

Murray served out his 20th win in a row to love and can rarely have been happier with his end-of-season form. He will be hard to stop from here, particularly with a bit of extra zip on his second serve.

“This surface takes the slice serve well, and I got some easy points,” he said. “I’ve made improvements on the second serve, which frees me, although I don’t think I served particularly well tonight. I had confidence to hit big close to the line, which I maybe didn’t have last year.”

Earlier, Wawrinka looked seriously out of sorts against Nishikori, who beat him 6-2, 6-3 in a match that never properly took off. The Swiss did not get a look in on Nishikori’s serve, while the Japanese made the most of his seven break points, taking two in each set. The overall points differential of 60-41 at the end told the story: a short, brutal beating.

Speaking about the challenge of facing Murray, Nishikori said: “This year we played three, four times. I had a tough loss in Rio [at the Olympics]. But at the US Open and Davis Cup, we played two good matches. Obviously, it’s the toughest match maybe in this group. I have to play 100% to beat Andy.”

In a nailed-on candidate for understatement of the year, Wawrinka, who managed 31 unforced errors in an hour and seven minutes, said: “It was not a great match compared to what I can do, that’s for sure.” He confirmed a knee injury had hampered him recently, but paid tribute to Nishikori. “He put a lot of pressure on from the beginning. I was a little bit slow on everything. I was hesitating a lot with my game, my movement.”

And that is where the core challenge of this tournament lies: staying power. How paradoxical, then, that Nishikori, who has experienced more breakdowns than the AA, should be the stronger and more precise in the shot at the end of the season than the Swiss, who is widely acknowledged as one of the physically strongest players on the Tour.

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There is plenty of fight in Wawrinka still, though. “I’m sure I still have something inside me to play some great tennis before the end of the year, so I’m going to try everything for that in the next match,” he said. “I’m going to do what I need to do tomorrow to get ready for trying to play better in two days.”

He will play Murray with a mixture of self-belief and respect for an opponent who has risen inexorably to the top, just as Djokovic has faded. “For sure, he has more confidence from the past few months,” Wawrinka said, “winning every tournament he plays. Novak wasn’t playing that good.

“I think he’s in a great position to finish No1 because he’s in front now. He has a good chance to do it at home. It can be an amazing tournament for him. But, again, it’s the World Tour Finals. It’s a group qualification to make the semi-final. Novak won the first match. Everything starts from zero.”

True. But it doesn’t stay there.