Andy Murray took a huge step towards booking his place in the prestigious end-of-season Masters Cup with a handsome victory over Fernando Verdasco to clinch his second ATP Tour title of the year in the St Petersburg Open.

The British number one ran out a 6-2, 6-3 winner over his Spanish rival and is now ideally set to challenge for the final place in the Shanghai event, which is open to the top eight in the ATP 2007 Race.

Victory in Russia, in his first appearance at the tournament, means he is now just three qualifying points behind current number eight Tommy Haas with only one ranking event - the Masters Series in Paris next week - to play.

Murray, as he seems to do in big matches, settled quickly into his stride and won the first set at a canter in his third final appearance of 2007.

Both men won their first service games but Murray found a way through in just the third game, breaking a nervy-looking Verdasco who produced an unforced error on his backhand to hand his opponent the game.

The Spaniard threatened to break straight back, holding a 0-30 advantage on the Murray serve, but the Scot battled back well to hold on, closing out the game with a fine drop shot - a sign of his supreme confidence having gifted Dmitry Tursunov a handful of points attempting a similar tactic earlier in the competition.

Two more games followed serve before Murray engineered a second break, producing some bold attacking tennis to take a three-game lead. One nerveless service game later and the first set was his.

The second set has often been Murray's stumbling block - as witnessed in his epic clash with Mikhail Youzhny in yesterday’s semi-final, but this time he broke at the first attempt, continuing his dominance of the Spaniard by holding his own serve to love.

Trailing 1-2, Verdasco took Murray to deuce on his own serve with some intelligently-placed shots but was again unable to find the consistency to actually break serve.

Murray spurned three break points in a mammoth game which Verdasco eventually held to make it 3-2, but he found the break when it really mattered, converting on his first match point for his second title of the season.