Battling Andy Murray Sets Up Monte Carlo Semi-final With Rafael Nadal

Andy Murray completed a battling second-set comeback to see off eighth seed Nikolay Davydenko and seal a place in the semi-finals of the Monte Carlo Masters.

Playing his second match of the day having beaten Fabio Fognini 7-6 6-4 this morning in a rain-affected clash, Murray fought back from 4-1 down in the second set to win it 6-4, having clinched the first set 7-6 (7/1).

The fourth seed was not at his best and struggled with his first serve throughout, but a combination of patient rallying and a Davydenko implosion gave him victory.

With the first set having gone with serve to 6-6, Murray forced the Russian into a number of unforced errors to drop a solitary point in the tie-break.

Murray lost his first service game of the second set but he immediately broke back, again forcing his opponent into errors.

His work was undone when he was broken a second consecutive time to go 3-1 down, his attempted drop shot drifting wide on break point. The Scot then blasted wide to give Davydenko a 4-1 lead but he held his own serve and broke the Russian's with some patient rallying from the back of the court.

Having held serve to level, Murray had two break points but was pegged back to deuce. But Davydenko then planted two straightforward backhands into the net to put Murray within a service game of victory.

The Russian took Murray to deuce in the 10th game but sent two forehands long to hand Murray the victory.

The victorious Scot was pleased to set up the first clay court semi-final of his career after a testing 24 hours. "It's been a long couple of days and I'm very happy to come through it," he said. "I had a long day yesterday with the rain and didn't get out of here until 9pm, and it was busy today."

The 22-year-old appeared to struggle with a hand injury against Davydenko, but confirmed it was nothing serious.

"It's just a couple of blisters," he said. "I've got new rackets for the clay court season and the grips are a bit different."

Murray will now face Spanish world No1 Rafael Nadal, who beat Nicolas Lapentti and Ivan Ljubicic on Friday. Nadal's third-round match against Lapentti was also rain-interrupted, but he had little difficulty in dispatching the Ecuadorian 6-3, 6-0, before Croatia's Ljubucic became the next victim, falling 6-3, 6-3.

Of his clash with Nadal, Murray said: "There'll be a lot of expectation on me but it's great experience for me to learn a lot from playing the top guys. I will learn a lot about how they play on clay."