MONTREAL: Wimbledon champion Andy Murray competed on hard courts for the first time in five months Wednesday, reaching the third round of the Montreal Masters.
Second seed Murray shook off his post-Wimbledon cobwebs with a fighting 6-4, 7-6 (7/2) victory over Marcel Granollers.
The win -- his 13th in succession -- came just over a month after the Scot made history with the first British Wimbledon men's singles title since 1936.
Murray's victory puts him in a match against Latvian Ernests Gulbis, a 6-3, 1-6, 6-1 winner over Italian 13th seed Fabio Fognini.
Murray, the reigning US Open champion, had his teething troubles early against Granollers, who won the Kitzbuhel clay court title last weekend.
Murray won the opening set in just under an hour, despite 19 unforced errors to 18 for his opponent.
Murray then fought back from 2-5 down in the second set, saving a set point in the 10th game before finally guaranteeing a tiebreaker.
Trailing 0-2 in the decider, the world number two clicked into gear to run out the winner on the first of four match points as Granollers committed his final unforced error.
Murray, the champion in Canada in 2009 and 2010, now stands 35-5 for the season.
In a rain-interrupted match, third seed David Ferrer lost to Alex Bogomolov 6-2, 6-4 while sixth seed and weekend Washington champion Juan Martin del Potro struggled before finally overcoming Croatian Ivan Dodig 6-4, 4-6, 7-5.
The Argentine winner came from two breaks down in the final set to rescue the match and reach the third round.
Canadian Vasek Pospisil, who is ranked 71st in the world, followed up his defeat of John Isner in the first round by routing Czech Radek Stepanek 6-2, 6-4 in the second round.
He was joined in the third round by compatriot and world number 11 Milos Raonic, who produced a smooth victory over Mikhail Youzhny 6-4, 6-4.
Fifth seed Tomas Berdych beat Alexandr Dolgopolov of the Ukraine 6-3, 6-4, but Swiss eighth seed Stanislas Wawrinka fell to his French practice partner Benoit Paire 6-2, 7-6 (7/2).
Wawrinka was the only Swiss in the field after Roger Federer pulled out with a back injury. (AFP)
