6-4, 7-6, 6-4 read the scoreline after Andy Murray got his job done on the lawns of the All England Club in round one. Murray is bidding for his 2nd Wimbledon title to back up his win in 2013.
To begin the match, the Scot had to battle past Kazakhstan's Mikhail Kukushkin who had previously made it to the 3rd round at Wimbledon. Kukushkin is known to be a hard hitter and remorseless when it comes to his forehand which even the British number one knew was going to be challenging on a grass court. The pair had previously met at the Australian Open round of 16 where Kukushkin was forced to retire in the 3rd set in a rather easy encounter. However this was going to be different as Murray had home crowd pressure or rather say a home advantage.
Kukushkin won the toss and elected to receive serve. Murray started off quite well and serve prevailed on both ends. However, the Scot was the one who was dictating terms from the very beginning and controlling the rallies. Murray won the first set 6-4.
The second set was the most interesting set probably in round one amongst the top four players. Serve once again prevailed for most of the time but this time it was Kukushkin who broke at 5-5 to then serve for the match. Big matches are all about handling pressure throughout and it looked too much for Kukushkin to close out the set against the world number three and he was broken. The set went into a tie break, and Kukushkin seemed to be lamenting the loss of his serve and found it difficult to recover from then on as the third seed quickly moved to 6-1 in the tie break. It was a matter of time and Murray was up two sets to love.
The 3rd set was on and Mikhail was in no mood to give up. However, he succumbed to an early break of serve and Murray was quickly up 2-0. It was all a catch up game then and Kukushkin could never quite recover from that broken serve. Murray served for the match at 5-4 and won it comprehensively.
The British number one will next face Robin Haase.