Murray aiming to move up a gear against Haase

The fourth seed could easily have lost the first set after dropping his serve in the opening game on Wednesday but he pulled through on a tie-break and went on to dominate the rest of the match.

Murray does not consider a bit of a first-round struggle to be a bad thing and feels experience has taught him that working your way into a tournament is the best way to succeed.

He said: “I think I definitely can play better, and that’s important. I don’t think you want to be playing your best tennis right at the beginning of the tournament.

“I think that’s something that, over the years, I’ve got better at understanding. I would get very frustrated in matches if I wasn’t playing great right at the beginning.

“I didn’t start the match great. But I actually calmed down more as the match went on and fought my way out of a little bit of a tricky situation in the first set. So I’m happy I can still improve. It’s all about just winning.”

Murray is likely to need to raise his game today if he is to progress to the third round, with big-hitting Dutchman Robin Haase definitely a potential banana skin.

Haase won their only previous match, in Rotterdam in 2008, and is currently in the best form of his career after winning his first ATP World Tour event in Kitzbuhel earlier this month.

Murray said: “He’s a tough player. He’s talented, has quite a big game. He’ll start off very fast, very flashy. He likes playing on the big courts. He’ll definitely come out swinging, so I need to try and weather that, play a solid match.”

Haase first broke into the top 100 as a 20-year-old in 2007 and looked set for a swift rise to the top ranks before a knee injury put him out of action for a year and a half.

He did not return until the very end of 2009, when he was ranked outside the top 600, but he wasted little time in picking up where he left off and by the close of last year he had climbed back to 65th.

Haase also made his mark at the grand slams, leading then world number one Rafael Nadal by two sets to one in the second round of Wimbledon before going down in five.

The 24-year-old said: “In 2010 I came back but to play the big guys after one and a half years out was just too much, they were too good.

“I had to make a step down, play some Challengers, I did well immediately and got back really fast. I’ve played Nadal, [Lleyton] Hewitt, [Novak] Djokovic here, I’m used to the big courts. I’m looking forward to another one. Against Nadal I almost made it and now I hope I can do it.”

Haase’s victory over Murray in Rotterdam was one of the biggest scalps of his career, but the Dutchman knows he did not play the Scot at the top of his game.

“He’d just a won a tournament in Marseille so I think he was a little tired,” added the world number 41. “I played good tennis, he wasn’t playing his best, I took advantage of that and now I have to play much better than I did then.”

Confidence is one thing Haase definitely does not lack, and he knows exactly what he must do if he is to knock out the fourth seed.

“If you look at my results, I can beat almost anyone,” he said. “I’ll definitely have to keep my percentage of errors really low, because he’s not making any errors most of the time.

“I’ll have to be healthy and be there mentally for every point. And of course I need to serve well. I just need to play my best game and hit a lot of winners.”