Andy Murray hits the buffers against Roger Federer after a tough season

In his worst nightmare Andy Murray could not have imagined his season would end like this, Roger Federer taking him to the cleaners in front of his home fans who stood and applauded the Swiss to the rafters for his excellence, and rightly so. In his most perfect dream Federer could hardly have conjured a scenario in which he beat the Scot 6-0, 6-1 in only 56 minutes.

Not since Novak Djokovic beat him 6-1, 6-0 in the semi-final of the 2007 Miami Masters – when Murray was injured – has the Scot had to suffer such indignity.

He said later that nobody has ever double-bagelled him but Federer came awfully close, as Murray’s serve came under intense pressure in the final moments. He held on to avoid that humiliation but there was almost relief on his face when the defeat was confirmed, his final backhand drifting into the tramlines.

There was a stunned silence inside the O2 Arena as the slow but inevitable execution unfolded, the Swiss advancing to the semi-finals of the ATP World Tour Finals, Murray packing his bags for Miami where he will hope to recover from the most complete drubbing of his career.

“It was a tough night,” he admitted. “I’ve lost slam finals and stuff, which has been very tough. But in terms of the way the match went it was not ideal from my side of the court – far from it. He played exceptionally well, that’s for sure. I can say I’m disappointed with my level tonight. But if I’d played well he probably still would have won anyway. He was striking the ball very, very clean. Made very few mistakes. Was hitting the ball off the middle of the racket on serve, returns. He maybe didn’t hit his first serve as well as he can, but apart from that everything else was very clean.

“Six-love, six-love, I mean, that’s never happened to me in my career,” added Murray, who said his ambitions had dwindled as the match unfolded. “Just try and win the point, try and set a target of winning points, try and win two points in a row rather than trying to focus on: ‘OK, I want to get this game.’ You just try and set smaller goals.”

His bigger goals are to do well next season. “It’s not a nice way to finish the year,” he said. “But I know there’s obviously a lot for me to work on. I didn’t feel like I was playing that badly going into the match. I’d had some good wins the last few weeks.”

Looking back on his season, Murray added: “The first three, four months were tough. It was hard. Going through surgery isn’t easy. Maybe I didn’t appreciate that so much at the time. I found it quite frustrating at the beginning. But then once I accepted that it’s a hard thing to go through, and obviously in the middle of that period I stopped working with Ivan [Lendl].

“But after that, I’ve had a couple of tough losses this year. The French Open and Wimbledon, I played well, but when I got to the semis of the French and the quarters of Wimbledon I didn’t feel like I played well. Tonight is another example where I’m disappointed. But mixed in with those matches was some good tennis. The last six weeks were good. Obviously some good wins. But not tonight.

“It’s been a hard year. But it’s something that I’ve had to go through. I’ll look back on it, and I’ve definitely learnt a lot this year about my body, what it’s like to come back from a tough, tough surgery. It’s not easy.”

There were moments towards the end when the gathering were hoping not for a comeback but a mere game for Murray, just a sliver of a dividend for his effort – and he got it with a half-decent serve to Federer’s backhand that brought up his only success after 52 minutes of a hiding as one-sided as that which Sergey Kovalev gave Bernard Hopkins in Atlantic City last weekend. Within 24 minutes, the Scot’s participation in the tournament – for which he had battled so gallantly over the previous six weeks – ended with the limpest of backhands into the net to bring the first set of their final group match effectively to an end. The rest was an exercise in damage limitation.

After 45 minutes Federer had won every single first serve; Murray’s figure had drifted to 35%. Those are killing stats. Playing as if blindfolded, he had won just six points. Each minor success was as if climbing Kilimanjaro. The rest of the contest was irrelevant. Murray had needed to win the first set to stay in the tournament after earlier computations had dictated the terms, Kei Nishikori putting away the alternate David Ferrer – who had replaced the injured Milos Raonic – in two sets to go through if the Scot mucked it up.