Andy Murray made a solid start in his bid to retain the Qatar Open title as a work�manlike performance was enough to secure a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Spain�s Albert Montanes in the first round.

Andy Murray made a solid start in his bid to retain the Qatar Open title as a workmanlike performance was enough to secure a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Spain's Albert Montanes in the first round.

The Scot displayed only fleeting glimpses of the form he showed in beating Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in the Capitala World Championship exhibition in Abu Dhabi last week, but still broke his opponent's serve four times.

Nadal and Federer were also comfortable winners in Doha yesterday but Novak Djokovic, the fourth member of a quartet expected to dominate world tennis in 2009, was surprisingly beaten in the first round of the Brisbane International by his former training partner, Ernests Gulbis of Latvia.

In front of a sparse crowd, Murray wasted two chances to break Montanes' serve in the first game but the Spaniard double-faulted in the third to give the Scot his first break.

Murray's play was sluggish initially but a combination of clever drop shots and some unforced errors from his opponent enabled him to break again for a 5-2 lead.

Montanes had four break points in an untidy service game but could not profit and the Scot took the set when his opponent hit a forehand long.

Murray broke Montanes' serve in the first game of the second set and again in the third with some powerful shots from the baseline on his way to a 4-0 lead. The Scot became frustrated, though, and a string of mistakes allowed his opponent to win three straight games before Murray held his serve for 5-3. Montanes held again, leaving Murray to serve out the match to set up a second-round tie with Germany's Philipp Petzschner.

Nadal and Federer cruised to victory against Fabrice Santoro and Potito Starace of Italy respectively but Dmitry Tursunov, the No.7 seed and Murray's projected quarter-final opponent, was beaten 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 by the Austrian Alexander Peya.

Djokovic's defeat by Gulbis - the 21-year-old world No.3 went down 6-4, 6-4 in his debut match at the brand new Pat Rafter Arena - was a setback in his preparations for his Australian Open defence.

Facing the prospect of arriving in Melbourne with only one competitive match under his belt, Djokovic asked for, and was granted, a wildcard entry into next week's Sydney International.

"I am not panicking," said the Serbian No.1seed. "The Australian Open is my highest goal for this part of the year and I really want to play well there. It's not the end of the world. It's the first match, so I'm not going to be pessimistic. I have a lot of time now to prepare for the Aussie Open."

The Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the Australian Open runner-up last year and No.2 seed in Brisbane, beat Argentina's Agustin Calleri 6-2, 7-5 to emerge as the new favourite.

Nikolay Davydenko, the world No.5, saw off the Austrian Daniel Koellerer 6-2, 6-3 in the first round of the Chennai Open in India, but the No.2 seed Stanislaw Wawrinka, runner-up to Murray in Doha a year ago, was beaten by Fabio Cipolla of Italy.

Lleyton Hewitt, on the comeback trail after missing most of last season following hip surgery, recorded his second victory in the Hopman Cup, although Australia were eliminated after suffering their second round-robin loss to the Slovak Republic.

Hewitt's followed up his three-set defeat of Germany's Nicolas Kiefer with another against Dominik Hrbaty after a three-hour battle. He remained upbeat about his Australian Open prospects. "This is what you need going into the Australian Open," he said. "This is obviously what tests it his hip and being able to back up day after day."

The Bulgarian Sesil Karatantcheva made a successful start to her first tournament in Australia since 2005 by beating the Czech Iveta Benesova 1-6, 6-4, 6-2. The 19-year-old returned to tennis 12 months ago after serving a two-year doping ban and said it felt like she was starting all over again.

"I kind of feel like a rookie again which is not bad, I kind of like it," she said, "but I feel like the grandmother on tour, you know, seeing all these 14- and 15-year-olds."