Novak Djokovic lived up to his top billing at Wimbledon when he combined brutal force with deft touches to reach the second round in a 6-0 6-1 6-4 destruction of Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev on Monday.
The 2011 champion, elevated to top seed despite his world No 2 ranking, appeared to be heading for a rarely-seen “triple bagel” in men’s tennis when he led 6-0 5-0 against his hapless opponent.
Golubev eventually registered on the Centre Court scoreboard after 44 minutes, drawing a warm round of applause from the crowd who were eager to witness a closer contest.
Djokovic, however, was in no mood to oblige and took just 88 minutes to book a second-round showdown with wily Czech campaigner Radek Stepanek, who himself dismissed Uruguayan Pablo Cuevas in three sets.
“It was a great start, especially the first two sets and I could not be happier with the performance,” said the Serb, who has not won a Grand Slam tournament since the 2013 Australian Open.
Djokovic was joined in the second round by Andy Murray, also elevated by Wimbledon’s grasscourt rankings system to the third seed, who handled Belgian challenger David Goffin with ease in a 6-1, 6-4, 7-5 win.
“I thought it was a very high-standard match. I was glad to finish it in three,” said the 2013 Wimbledon champion.
“I was nervous this morning and I was nervous last night, but once you sit down on the chair it’s time to get on with it.
“It brought back a lot of good memories. It is nice to walk out to a full crowd for the first match,” he added.
Czech sixth seed Tomas Berdych, the 2010 runner-up, also advanced, coming from a set down to beat Romania’s Victor Hanescu 6-7 (5/7), 6-1, 6-4, 6-3.
Grigor Dimitrov, the Bulgarian 11th seed who won the Queen’s title last week, beat Ryan Harrison of the United States, 7-6 (7/1), 6-3, 6-2.
Latvian 12th seed Ernests Gulbis, who made the French Open semi-finals, also went into the second round despite surprisingly stiff opposition from Estonia’s Jurgen Zopp in a 7-6 (9/7), 7-5, 7-6 (12/10)victory.
Spanish 18th seed Fernando Verdasco, who took Murray to five sets in the quarter-finals in 2013, was knocked out by Australia’s Marinko Matosevic 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2, making him the highest men’s seed to lose at the All England Club on Day 1.
He was joined by Italian Andreas Seppi among seeds to fall on Monday. Seppi dropped a marathon match with Argentine Leonardo Mayer, 3-6, 6-2, 4-6, 7-6 (7/5), 4-6. No 31 seed Vasek Pospisil also fell to Dutch Robin Haase 6-7 (6/8), 6-4, 5-7, 3-6.
Sergiy Stakhovsky, the Ukrainian who sent seven-time champion Roger Federer crashing to a shock second round loss last year, beat Argentina’s Carlos Berlocq 6-3, 6-3, 6-3.
Other seeds to book second-round tickets included No 7 David Ferrer (d Pablo Carreno Busta), No 16 Fabio Fognini (d Alex Kuznetsov), No 17 Mikhail Youzhny (d James Ward), No 20 Kevin Anderson (d Aljaz Bedene), No 21 Alexandr Dolgopolov (d Samuel Groth), No 26 Marin Cilic (d Paul-Henri Mathieu) and No 27 Roberto Bautista Agut (d Steve Johnson).
A number of unheralded players scored minor upsets over ATP Tour regulars as well, with Slovenia’s Blaz Rola beating Pablo Andujar, Taiwan’s Jimmy Wang beating Alejandro Gonzalez, Britain’s Tim Puetz beating Teymuraz Gabashvili, Australia’s Luke Saville beating Dominic Thiem and Czech Republic’s Jan Hernych beating Tobias Kamke.
Puetz was a rare British survivor on the tournament’s first day, with local qualifiers Kyle Edmund (defeated by Andreas Haider-Maurer), Daniel Cox (defeated by Jeremy Chardy), Daniel Evans (defeated by Andrey Kuznetsov) and Ward all going out.
Other unseeded first-round winners included Marcos Baghdatis (d Dustin Brown), Edouard Roger-Vasselin (d Filippo Volandri), Benjamin Becker (d Donald Young), Bernard Tomic (d Evgeny Donskoy) and Gilles Simon (d Konstantin Kravchuk).
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