TENNIS: Scotland's Andy Murray regained his winning form as he eased past Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic 6-3 6-2 in the first round of the World Indoor Tournament.
Murray had an excellent start of the season, winning two warm-up events in the run-up to the Australian Open, but his hopes of winning a maiden grand slam title was stalled by Fernando Verdasco in the fourth round at Melbourne Park.
"Obviously this was a very good win as he (Ljubicic) normally plays very well indoors but today he didn't play and serve his best tennis," said Murray.
Ljubicic, finalist in Rotterdam in 2005 and 2007, only kept up with Murray the first six games before he dropped his serve in the eighth game and lost eight games in a row.
The second seed will be on guard in his next match as he will be up against Andreas Seppi. The Italian knocked out Lleyton Hewitt and Rafael Nadal from the tournament last year and also defeated Murray in their only meeting to date.
"Seppi can be a tough guy to beat when he plays his best tennis," said Murray.
Murray was joined in the second round by fifth seed Gael Monfils and sixth seed David Ferrer.
Monfils got an easy ride on Tuesday as he was leading 6-4 1-0 when his Swiss opponent Stephane Bohli retired injured.
Spaniard Ferrer had to scrap past Austria's Juergen Melzer 3-6 7-6 7-5.
Bulgarian wildcard Grigor Dimitrov recorded his first win on the ATP Tour by downing Czech Tomas Berdych 4-6 6-3 6-4.
The world number 478's Rotterdam adventure is likely to end in the next round, however, as he is expected to face world number one Rafael Nadal provided the Spaniard overcomes Simone Bolelli today.
"It became a bit emotional when I realised that I've just beaten a player who I normally only saw playing on TV," said 17-year-old Dimitrov, the 2008 junior champion at Wimbledon and the US Open.