Andy Murray dominant

Andy Murray had a good year in 2013 famously winning Wimbledon by defeating Novak Djokovic in the final, the same man he defeated in New York to win his first major.  Each of those wins eased the pain of an Australian Open finals loss to the Serbian ace, one in 2011, the other as recently as last year.

Now Andy had been in questionable states of fitness and form entering this years event, with doubts as to whether he could withstand the rigour of his potential second week draw.  First round opponent Go Soeda from Japan, ranked 112 currently, enjoyed a little time in the top 50 but decided that wasn't for him and slipped back to where he feels more comfortable, with friendlier neighbours.

He would find out just how unsociable Andy Murray could be if the Scottish fourth seed displayed his vast array of skills on Hisense Arena in this match.

Soeda served first and the chair umpire resisted the temptation to say Ready Set Go, instead imploring Go to just "Play".
Out of the blocks in impressive fashion the Japanese player aced Murray amongst other fine shot presentation to ice the first game.  However Andy is Scottish, and he thought that allowing one games grace was generosity gone crazy.

Serving well and successfully sending his forehand out for a practice run, Andy levelled at 1- 1 before taking apart the Japanese game plan.
Introducing his slice to the match, Murray forced errors from Soeda to add to the mistakes contributed of his own accord.  The service break materialised, and Murray went on a wild rampage at the sight of the first speck of blood.

He held serve with ease, an ace sealing it, and then played around with Soeda off both sides, the backhand slice now also providing an avenue of discomfort for which no immediate cure was forthcoming.  Another break of serve and Murray was serving at 4-1.

Soeda came up with a terrific backhand in the sixth game but Murray trumped it with a better forehand and a whole lot of other pretty nifty stuff to take a 5-1 advantage.
Opening up completely, the Scot slammed home two wicked backhands which drove Soeda to despair and into a double fault which gave the set to Murray 6-1.

More of the same in the second set with Andy flying solo and Soeda just another spectator.  Two more authoritative service holds sandwiched a Soeda serve full of errors and punctuated by a winner or two from Murray.  There was a sense that the fourth seed may even be enjoying some of his output.  Never let him be accused of relaying that enjoyment through a facial gesture, though.  That look could be the one of the player being battered, so underwhelming in its delight does it ever become.

6-1 the second set went to Murray, to copy his manuscript from a little earlier.

Go had stopped being competitive for quite awhile in the match so it was a pleasant surprise to see him reappear as the player capable of actually winning a game.
He in fact won three games on his own serve in succession to lead the third set 3-2.

That was the last that Murray allowed and his very complete victory 6-1 6-1 6-3 will have cleared the cob webs away and revealed a nasty roadblock ahead for players in his part of the draw.