Andy Murray has admitted that he is determined to maintain his consistent form into the final weeks of the season in order to oust Novak Djokovic as the world's number one player.
The 29-year-old trails the top-ranked Serb by 2,415 points heading into the Erste Bank Open in Vienna this week, with victory in that tournament enough to see him cut the margin by a further 500 points.
Then comes the final Masters 1000 event of the season next week in Paris which, should results go Murray's way, will further reduce the gap as both men prepare for the ATP World Tour Finals at London's O2 Arena.
Murray, who won his sixth ranking title of the year in Shanghai earlier this month, acknowledges that more needs to be done if he is to end the year on top
"I was close, if not to finish number one a few years ago, around the US Open time. But to finish the year-end world number one would be my best chance," he told Sky Sports News. "Novak's still got a pretty big lead in terms of points and he plays extremely well on the indoor hard-courts and has played in London, whereas I've struggled a little bit so I've got to make some improvements this year if I want to get close to doing that.
"If you talk about getting to number one, it's not about individual tournaments, it's about a 12-month period and obviously you want to be consistent and get to the latter stages of as many tournaments as possible, which I've done the last few months and obviously I will try and do over the next few events if it's possible.
"It's not about one event, it's about a total season of 17, 18 tournaments and whoever performs best over them will get there and right now that's obviously Novak but I'll try my best to finish as strong as I can."
Stanislas Wawrinka, Milos Raonic and Kei Nishikori complete the men's top-five ranked players.
Daniel Lewis
