British and Scottish number one Andy Murray  won his second title of the year at the Open 13 in Marseille against unseeded Croat Mario Ancic. This victory will see him return to the top 10 in the world after beating the Croat 6-3 6-4 in the final today.

Murray began with more of the fine returning which he had produced all week and seen him easily into todays final in France, although Mario Ancic did not let him have things all his own way.

After 7 games on serves Murray, seeded 4th, broke in game eight with a superb forehand winner and then went on to save break-points on his own serve in his next service game as he took the opening set.

In the Second (ultimtaly final set) his serve came under great pressure from the former world top number 7 Ancic, and in game four the young Scot was broke in game four. Murray rallied though and immeadiatly broke back and the broke again in the 7th game, victory followed shortly after, wrapping the game up in 104 minutes.

This was Andy Murray’s first event back after controversially missing Britain’s Davis Cup tie against Argentina to protect his knee. After the match Murray said

I served well throughout and returned really well in the second set,” Murray said….He started getting a bit tired in that second set and that was probably the key to the match….Being in the top 10 is one of my goals. I’ll try to stay there the whole year.

Murray’s record for the year is now played 3 tournaments and won 2 and his only loss for the year so far was in the first round of the ozzy open to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the eventual finalist in Melbourne.

Andy Murray humbled France’s Paul-Henri Mathieu 6-2 6-2 today in the semi finals of the Open 13 tournament in Marseille.  Murray will no face the giant Croat Mario Ancic in tomorrow’s final.

The British number one broke serve twice in both sets and when Andy got his first serve in he never dropped a point. After the win Murray said,

I played really aggressively, hit a lot winners and didn’t give any chances on my serve…This was without doubt one of my best matches since my return from injury…My serve was strong and my plan was to force him to take the net worked perfectly.

Mario Ancic is currently outside of the top 100, but this doesn’t tell the full story as he missed most of last year through injury, Ancic was as high as 7 in the world back in July 2006. This is his first tournament back this year and he is therefore undefeated in the whole of 2008 and will be looking forward to making it 5 wins in a row and securing his 4th title of his career. Ancic has not actually been in final since 2006 and in this period Andy Murray has made his big leap up the rankings and winning 4 titles on the his way.

In their only other previous meeting back in Auckland 2006, Ancic defeated Murray 6-3 7-6(4). Though Andy did have 10 break points in the match, but only managed to convert 2 of them.

Murray now has a chance to show that he may have made the right decision to miss the Davis cup match against Argentina last month in order to push his singles career to as high a position as possible.