DUBAI // Beating Gilles Muller this year has been a harbinger of good things.
Stan Wawrinka defeated him in Chennai and Rotterdam and the Swiss went on to clinch the title at both events.
Viktor Troicki beat him in the semis at Sydney and he was holding aloft the trophy a day later.
At the Australian Open, Novak Djokovic prevailed over him in the fourth round and he, too, went on to win the title.
Muller, then, has lost to the eventual champion in four of his five tournaments this year and, if the trend continues, Andy Murray’s Dubai fans could be celebrating the Scot’s first success here.
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Murray, who lost the 2012 final to Roger Federer, beat Muller 6-4, 7-5 in an hour and 45 minutes to book a second-round clash with Portugal’s Joao Sousa, an opponent he has beaten comfortably in all four previous matches.
The Scot could have finished a bit earlier, but serving for the match at 5-4, he had a minor blip and dropped his serve.
“I think the end of both sets I didn’t serve so well,” Murray said. “But apart from that, I didn’t give him any opportunities really.
“I feel like I got a little bit unlucky at the end of the second set. He got a couple of net cords in that last game, the 5-4 game where I got broken, and yeah, did very well to respond straightaway and get the break right back. I thought I played a fairly high-quality match.”
Murray, of course, has been playing “fairly high-quality” tennis for most of the year.
He showed glimpses of his good form in winning the Mubadala title in Abu Dhabi and then made it to the final of the Australian Open, dropping only two sets in his first six matches before Djokovic got the better of him in the final in four sets.
A year ago, fans were wondering if Murray would be able to scale these peaks again.
He had struggled through most of last season after returning from lower back surgery and did not have a single win over a top 10 player in 2014 until he beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the fourth round of the US Open in September.
“Mentally, [I feel] completely different,” Murray, the two-time major winner, said as he compared his 2014 start to this season.
“Much more confident in my body and in my game.
“There are still things I can do better, but last year even if I was playing well, I felt like I was still doubting a lot of things. I didn’t have confidence in my body or in my game.
“So, yeah, I feel much better at this stage of the year than I did at this stage last year.”
Last September, Murray’s ranking had slipped to No 12, his worst position on the ATP leader board since May, 2008.
He turned it around in the final two months of the season, winning Shenzhen, Vienna and Valencia to qualify for the season-ending championships.
Murray’s run to the Australian Open final put him back in the top four and this Monday, he has climbed a spot to No 3, replacing Rafael Nadal.
“Obviously, the race is the thing that really matters during the year,” Murray, 27, said.
“We are only a few weeks in, but I feel like I had a strong start. The end of last year was obviously good for me.
“This period of the year I don’t have many points to defend, because I didn’t do particularly well at Indian Wells and Miami, and then, you know, also the clay, the first few weeks of the clay court season I didn’t win many matches, either.
“So these next few months are a good chance for me to capitalise on that. If I can string some good tournaments together, hopefully I can try and move higher.”
Doing well in Dubai would help and, if you believe in omens, beating Muller is half the job done.
arizvi@thenational.ae
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