INDIAN WELLS, California (AFP) - Andy Murray showed no lingering ill effects of the virus that sidelined him last month as he reached the third round of the Indian Wells Masters on Saturday.
The Briton, ranked fourth in the world and seeded fourth in the 4.5 million-dollar tournament, shook off an early service break to beat Spain's Albert Montanes 7-5, 6-3.
"I thought I moved great, best I had moved in quite a while," said Murray, who was forced to withdraw from the quarter-finals in Dubai with a mystery virus that also caused him to miss Britain's Davis Cup tie against Ukraine last week.
"I wasn't hitting the ball particularly well. After I went down a break in the first set I did well to come back."
The 21-year-old Scot had said prior to the tournament that he didn't expect to be at his best from the beginning, but he said coming in with lower expectations perhaps made it easier to work his way into the match.
"When I go a break down early, if I was feeling my best and expecting to win comfortably, maybe I would have been more disappointed and panicked a little bit," he said.
"But when you're not expecting to play your best and you go behind, you just deal with it a little bit better.
"But I don't change the way I play. I got more solid as it went on," added the Scot, who broke Montanes in the eighth game of the second set to take a 5-3 lead before serving out the match.
Murray had beaten Montanes comfortably in their only previous meeting, in Doha earlier this year.
But the 35th-ranked Spaniard, who started the season a disappointing 0-6, was coming off a dominant 6-3, 6-0 first-round victory over Florent Serra, and Murray said he proved a tough challenge in the early going.
"At the start he didn't miss a lot of balls," said Murray, who like all 32 seeded players had a first-round bye. "He was very solid. He's playing much closer to the baseline than he had when I played him beforehand."
But as the court warmed up under the California sunshine Murray said, it worked to his advantage.
"The ball started bouncing much higher," Murray said. "I think he's only 5-foot-7, 5-foot-8, so the ball was getting up quite high. It was quite tough for him to control it when it was up above his head, and he started to make a few mistakes from there."
Murray was also pleased with his fitness.
"I feel fine," he said. "I didn't feel like I was too out of breath after long rallies.
"I think the match was just over an hour and a half. I felt like I could have gone for at least another 45 minutes or so, which is pleasing.
"I just need to sort of rest, recover, and get ready for the next match and be in the best shape possible for that one."