Murray eyes third spot in rankings

Andy Murray hopes his good run in the Thailand Open will help him climb into the top three in the world before the end of the year.

Murray eased to a semi-final meeting with Gilles Simon in Bangkok with a 6-4 6-4 victory over Grigor Dimitrov as the Frenchman beat Germany's Matthias Bachinger 3-6 6-3 6-2.

Murray, ranked fourth behind Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, said: "By playing the full Asian stretch, there is a chance for me to try and move my ranking up by one spot, which is something I want to do by the end of the year."

Murray was pleased with his service game against Dimitrov and he told atpworldtour.com: "I served well again. He started the match pretty well and once I served a couple of break points in my second service game, the momentum was then with me for a lot of the match.

"I did not give him too many opportunities on my serve. Returning is normally one of the strongest parts of my game, so when I served well I tended to put pressure on him and he missed a few shots at the end of both sets."

Murray, who remains on course to take his third title of the season, saw the early stages against Dimitrov go with serve, although he had to save three break points in order to avoid an early setback.

Dimitrov was made to pay as Murray, in the ninth game, exerted his influence to break the Bulgarian's serve. The Scot then served it out to win the first set.

The second set followed a similar pattern. It was the ninth game once more in which Murray made the breakthrough and, again, he served out to win the match and a place in the semi-finals.