Andy Murray’s recent resurgence continued when the Briton qualified for the ATP World Tour Finals by reaching the Paris Masters quarterfinals with a 6-3, 6-3 win against Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov on Thursday.

After dropping outside the world top-10 following his US Open quarterfinal exit, Murray began a late push for a spot in the London showpiece event, which features eight of the best players this season.

The eighth seed showed he was up to the task by seeing off ninth-seeded Dimitrov, who is now eliminated from the race for the November 10-16 event at London’s O2.

Murray will take on World No.1 Novak Djokovic for a semifinal spot after the Serbian beat Frenchman Gael Monfils 6-3, 7-6(2) after 92 minutes in Thursday’s late match. “There were no downs really in the match,” Murray told reporters after becoming the fifth player to book his place in the season finale. “Some of the matches that I’ve had against the top, top players I had some periods in the match where my level had dropped off a little bit, and the best players capitalise on those moments. I didn’t have any of them today. I played well from start to finish and I made it very difficult for Grigor.”

Federer beaten

Roger Federer’s hopes of finishing the season as World No.1 took a hit when the Swiss second seed was dumped out of the Paris Masters with a 7-6(5), 7-5 defeat by Canadian Milos Raonic in the quarterfinals on Friday. Seventh seed Raonic served 21 aces to keep alive his hopes of securing a place at the season-ending ATP World Tour Finals, for which Tomas Berdych qualified earlier with a 6-7(4), 6-4, 6-4 victory over South African Kevin Anderson.

Federer, 33, has narrowed the points gap on World No.1 Novak Djokovic in recent weeks with Serbian Djokovic holding a slender advantage. The 17-time Grand Slam champion never found the key on Raonic’s huge serve and managed to engineer only one break point, in the 10th game of the second set when the Canadian bombed down an ace to fend off a set point.

A superb backhand pass in the next game allowed Raonic to break the Federer serve and he closed out the match to notch his first win against the Swiss in seven encounters.

Earlier, fifth-seeded Berdych, who won on his Bercy debut in 2005, became the sixth player to secure his place in the November 9-16 elite eight-man event in London. After losing the opening set tiebreak, Berdych found his range on serve to level and recovered from a break down in the third set before breaking the 14th seeded Anderson’s serve decisively in the ninth game.