Murray surges into Wimbledon second round

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LONDON: Fourth seed Andy Murray survived a nervous start to surge into the second round at Wimbledon with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-0, 6-0 win against Spain's Daniel Gimeno-Traver on Monday.

Murray's second experience of playing under the Centre Court roof -- closed due to torrential rain -- looked like being an uncomfortable one as he dropped the first set in the humid 'indoor' conditions.

But the British number one fought back impressively to avoid his first opening round exit at the All England Club and set up a clash with either Slovenia's Blaz Kavcic or Germany's Tobias Kamke in the second round.

Murray, who has lost in the semi-finals here for the last two years, is bidding to become the first British winner of the Wimbledon men's singles title since Fred Perry in 1936 and this was a solid start.

Murray was unhappy with the way the change of conditions slowed the pace of the game when he defeated Stanislas Wawrinka under the #80 million retractable roof in 2009.

So it was somewhat inevitable that he would be forced to spend the entire duration of this match playing under cover due to the rain that poured down from the late-afternoon.

Regardless of the conditions, Murray knew there could be no excuses for defeat against a clay-court specialist ranked 56th in the world.

Gimeno-Traver, playing just his 10th match on grass, looked ideal first round fodder for Murray, who arrived in high spirits after winning the Wimbledon warm-up event at Queen's Club for the second time in three years just a week after his run to the French Open semi-finals.

Initially Murray found it hard to stamp his authority on the match and the Australian Open finalist couldn't convert his first opportunity to break Gimeno-Traver in the fourth game.

He was left to rue that failure when the Spaniard, going for his shots with abandon, forced Murray into a series of errors and broke to take a 5-4 lead and then kept his nerve to serve out the set.

Murray wore a look of confusion on his face as he slumped into his chair at the interval and another chance to seize the initiative escaped him early in the second set when he squandered two break points.

Where the younger Murray might have lost his cool in this tricky situation, the more mature version simply pushed even harder to get his opponent off balance.

Gradually, Gimeno-Traver began to run out of steam and Murray was finally able to dictate the tempo.