Andy Murray powers past Ernests Gulbis in US Open

Andy Murray started his US Open campain at Flushing Meadows last night with a convincing victory over the Latvian Top 100 seed Ernests Gulbis. The 22-year-old Scot won the first round match in straight sets, taking just 2hr 16min to finish off his erratic opponent 7-5, 6-3, 7-5.

Murray has now beaten the promising Gulbis on all four occasions that they have played, the last occasion being at Wimbledon when he swamped the Latvian again in straight sets. Despite a tight opening set which saw an early exchange of breaks before a woeful service game from Gulbis handed his opponent five set points.

The next set saw Murray go 3-0 up, before a comeback from the eastern European to cut the deficit to one game at 4-3. The Scot then went into overdrive and swept through the next two games, before closing out the final set with a break in the 11th game. Murray will now face Paul Capdeville of Chile in the second round, the first time the pair have met. Capdeville is ranked 87th in the world and shouldn't trouble the British No 2 seed.

There was further good news for Murray when his two potentially tricky opponents for the 3rd and 4th rounds were both knocked out at the first hurdle, with the big-serving Ivo Karlovic and Stanislas Wawrinka - who pushed Murray in a five-set classic at Wimbledon - losing to, respectively, Ivan Navarro and Nicolas Lapentti.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING
Simon Cambers, the Guardian: "There were a few aces, not many unforced errors and even a bit of serve and volley from Andy Murray as the Scot got the job done at the US Open last night, beating the Latvian Ernests Gulbis. It was a straightforward if at times patchy performance from the world No2 but he was still on and off court within two hours, 17 minutes, wasting little excess energy in the first of what he hopes will be seven matches en route to his first grand slam title. Having been tipped as a future world No1 as recently as 18 months ago, Gulbis has gone off the boil to the extent that his ranking has plummeted to 95 and it is now more than a year since he won two matches in a row." ·