Andy Murray recorded his first victory since back surgery in convincing fashion against Stanislas Wawrinka in Abu Dhabi.
The Wimbledon champion looked pretty sharp as he saw off world number eight Wawrinka 6-3 6-4 to finish fifth at the Mubadala World Tennis Championship exhibition.
Murray had opened his season on Boxing Day with defeat by Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in his first proper match since helping Great Britain beat Croatia to reach the Davis Cup World Group in September.
He had a minor operation on a long-standing back problem later that month, bringing an early end to his season.
After training hard in Miami over the past six weeks, Murray was happy with his fitness against Tsonga and he looked to have shaken off some of the rust when he faced Wawrinka.
The world number four got the better of three successive breaks to take the first set and then forged ahead again with a break for 4-3 in the second.
Wawrinka saved a match point on his own serve with a forehand winner but Murray confidently served out the victory and then declared himself pleased with the way his back has responded to playing matches again.
Speaking on court, the 26-year-old said: "I feel pretty good, a lot better than I did a few months ago. I just need to play more matches like this because the intensity's a lot higher than you can get in practice.
"It was good to get two matches against top players. Everyone needs matches at this stage, especially me. It's been a perfect start and hopefully I'll get better."
Murray now makes the short trip to Doha for next week's Qatar ExxonMobil Open, where he will start his ATP World Tour season alongside world number one Rafael Nadal.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article