Andy Murray's Wimbledon nerves help him progress in style in front of royalty

Even champions get sweaty palms and Andy Murray, twice the champion of Wimbledon, is no different. In his 15th campaign in SW19, playing his first round against a man ranked 228 places below him in the world pecking order, he was nervous on Monday afternoon. And he happily admitted it.

Andy Murray takes the acclaim of the Wimbledon crowd following his win over Ryan Peniston.

In a packed Centre Court, playing in front of British Royalty in the shape the Princess of Wales and tennis royalty in the shape of Roger Federer, Murray took about half-an-hour to settle his pulse rate and shake the tension out of his legs before he absolutely flattened Ryan Peniston 6-3 6-0 6-1. Once he got his first break of serve in the opening set, there was no stopping him.

He moved well, he served well, he was crafty and canny, he was big and powerful – he looked like a bloke who knew how to win on these courts and Peniston looked like a man out of his depth. As starts to Wimbledon campaigns go, this was as good as it has been for the Scot in years. As good as it has been since before his right hip imploded in 2017.

“Obviously what happened and has happened at a lot of the majors that I played in the last few years,” he explained, “I've had lots of pretty long matches early on in the tournament. Yes, you can recover from them, but it's not like I had a really long match in the first round and the next one has been like straightforward. I've had multiple long matches one after another.

Roger Federer, flanked by his wife Mirka and the Princess of Wales, laughs during Murray's winners' speech.

“So, yeah, any time you get the chance to finish a match quickly and can conserve some energy is a really positive thing. It's not necessarily confidence that I gain from it, it just means that hopefully the deeper I go in the tournament the fresher I will be.”

As for the nerves that led to his tentative start, they were just what the doctor ordered. The slight knot in the stomach and those sweaty palms were brought on by the conditions – playing under the roof on a rain-sodden afternoon – and the very fact that this was Wimbledon. This mattered more than anything else. And he had played well – that mattered above all else.

“I always get nervous at the beginning of Wimbledon,” Murray said. “I like that. I like to feel that way. I mean, it's great. If I was going on the court and felt flat, didn't have any emotion when I'm walking out there, that's something that would probably be a bit wrong.

“But there's also the fact that you are playing in different conditions. It's not the same playing with the roof closed. It's more humid. It was extremely loud at the beginning with the rain. The court – I've always found it a little bit hard to move on, a little bit slippy, especially at the beginning of the event when the roof closes. You throw that uncertainty into a first-round match at Wimbledon, it can create a few more doubts than normal.

Murray awaits the winner of Dominic Thiem and Stefanos Tsitsipas, whose match has been delayed by the rain.

“As the match went on, I cut out the unforced errors. I was pretty ruthless at the beginning of the second and third sets. There was no sort of dip in intensity or anything. I got ahead early in those sets, did well. So, yeah, I was pleased with everything, apart from the beginning.”

His next opponent is yet to be decided and, for once, he had the luxury of a relatively early night knowing full well that Dominic Thiem and Stefanos Tsitsipas had to come back on Wednesday and finish their rain-delayed match (Thiem is leading by a set and it is on serve in the second). Murray has a practice court booked for 1pm and there is every chance that as he is warming up, Thiem and Tsitsipas will be at each other’s throats on No 2 Court. That was something of a novelty for the man who has spent the past decade doing the evening shift at Wimbledon to keep the television companies happy.

“I will definitely watch some of their match in the evening to look at what they're doing and how the match has gone, see how they're both playing,” Murray said with a relaxed air. “I probably won't watch it live. It's obviously been tricky for everyone today. Lots of hanging around. It's tough for the players that got rained off. As much as prefer to play outdoors, like that's one of the positives of getting to play under the roof. Although the conditions are different, you get to finish your match and you get the consistency in the schedule. It's positive in that respect.”

So far, so good, then. Murray has already claimed – with more than good cause – that he is still one of the best grass court players in the world and yesterday he proved it. Now he needs to maintain that ruthless streak to avoid the five-hour marathons that made great headlines at the Australian Open earlier this year but ultimately ended his Melbourne chances in the third round.

“I'm playing well enough to beat most of the players, I think, in the draw if I play well,” he reiterated. “Physically, I feel good. Yeah, physically I feel absolutely fine right now. You don't plan and prepare for the matches that I had earlier this year in Australia or when I played Stefanos at the US Open, or whatever. I hope my matches don't go on that long. If they do, I've prepared well enough to be able to deal with them. It’s how you recover physically from them.”

And with that Murray was off for an early Tuesday night, a relaxing Wednesday and a date with whoever was left standing on No 2 Court on Thursday. For the man with sweaty palms, it had been a mighty fine day.