World No 1 Andy Murray extended his winning streak to 25 matches with an opening-round victory over Frenchman Jeremy Chardy at the Qatar Open on Tuesday.
Murray, who has been honoured with a knighthood in the New Year Honours list after a superb 2016, continued his momentum on court by seeing off Chardy 6-0 7-6 (7-2) in convincing fashion.
Olympic and Wimbledon champion Murray, bidding for a third Doha title after wins in 2008 and 2009, will play Austrian left-hander Gerald Melzer in the second round and remains on track for a collision course with Novak Djokovic in the final on Saturday.
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In his first competitive match of the year, the 29-year-old Scot dropped seven points in an unerring first-set display, which he won with a bagel.
Chardy, ranked 69, broke serve at the start of the second set and although he dropped his own immediately, he pushed Murray hard for the rest of the match on a warm desert evening.
Twice Pau-born Chardy held serve to stay in the match and stretched Murray into a tie-break, but the pressure eventually told on the Frenchman as Murray completed a useful workout when Chardy sent a forehand volley beyond the baseline.
Murray, who is unbeaten since losing to Kei Nishikori in the US Open quarter-finals in September, looked in fine fettle making just nine unforced errors in the match as he seeks to win his sixth consecutive title.
"He didn't start well and it's always difficult in the first match of the year but in the second set he played extremely well and was very aggressive, fought to the end and pushed me hard," Murray said.
"I like the conditions and it's a really nice court to play on. I'm happy to be back so I'll hopefully have a good run."
When asked to put into words his amazing 2016, Murray replied: "The last six months of last year was by far the best tennis I had played consistently. But I have just got to keep improving. I lost a lot of tough matches, a lot of big finals against some of the best players of all time. I just have to keep getting better and learn from my defeats.
"I finally managed to get to number one at the end of last year after 12 years of trying so it was a lot of hard work, ups and downs, some tough losses, but I just kept fighting and managed to do it."
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Earlier on Tuesday, France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga also progressed to the second round, but only after seeing off a determined fightback from Russia's Andrey Kuznetsov.
The world No 12 won 6-1 4-6 6-2 to set up a last-16 encounter with Germany's Dustin Brown.
Tsonga, who was playing his first match in Doha since taking the Qatar Open title in 2012, said: "I played pretty good in the first set, then I was waiting a little bit more in the second for the good shot. It was a good match. Good to win."
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