Cameron Norrie has capped off his breakthrough run at the BNP Paribas Open by fighting back from a set down to win his first Masters 1000 title at the age of 26.
Norrie, who had never won a main draw match at the tournament until this year, beat Nikoloz Basilashvili 3-6, 6-4, 6-1, to become the first ever player from Britain to win the tournament. Going one step further than Andy Murray, Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski who have all settled for runner-up in the past. In the final Norrie broke his opponent five times and hit 10 winners past him. It is the second time this year he has beaten Basilashvili on the Tour following their meeting in Rotterdam.
“What an incredible week I’ve had here,” said Norrie. “It was just a strange match. It was over quite quickly, and then the last kind of set I was expecting it to be longer. He made a couple errors towards the end.’
“I still don’t really know what I’m experiencing. It was an amazing couple weeks and I’m so happy with how I treated all the occasions, all the big moments, all the matches. I’m so happy, so pleased to win my biggest title.”
The triumph occurs during what has been a breakthrough season for the 26-year-old who is a former No.1 American collegiate player. Indian Wells was his sixth Tour final of 2021 and he has now won 47 matches. The only other player to reach six finals this year on the men’s Tour is Novak Djokovic.
Heading into the title match in Indian Wells, Norrie encountered a peculiar setback to his preparations after three pairs of his shoes went missing. Something which also happened to compatriot Andy Murray during the tournament.
“Every day I left my shoes on top of the locker. I think someone, I don’t know who it was, maybe someone from the cleaners or something last night, came through and they threw the three pairs of shoes that I had away,” he said.
“I looked all day. I had everyone looking. I don’t know what the people have against the Brits with stealing the shoes, but I didn’t manage to get them back.
“Yeah, it was just difficult. Luckily, I didn’t have a wedding ring attached [unlike Murray],” he added.
Norrie admitted the incident did partly distract him during what was the biggest final of his career because the new shoes ‘felt a bit heavy.’
“A couple times I was just thinking about it, probably not the best thing. You don’t want to be thinking about your shoes. At one point I said, All right, these are the shoes I got, I’m just going to focus on what I can control right now. I wore them in a little bit, and it came good in the end.”
Looking ahead to the coming weeks, Norrie is now in with a shot of qualifying for the year-end ATP Finals in Turin. He has moved to tenth in the race with 2830 points. Although one of those players ahead of him, Rafael Nadal, will not be playing in the event due to injury. This time last year Norrie was ranked outside the top 50.
“I’m playing Vienna, Paris, and Stockholm, the last three events indoors. It would be nice to make it (to the ATP Finals), but I’m going to keep going, keep taking care of what I can and handling what I can. We’ll see how it goes,” he said.
“I’m looking forward to the indoor season. I really like the courts. I’ve never really made a deep run in one of those tournaments, but I always play well. I always lose tight matches. Hopefully those can swing in my favor this year.”
Norrie has made his top 20 debut this week and is currently ranked 15th in the world.