Timing is everything in life and Andy Murray’s seems to be ticking along perfectly.

His first round had been safely and impressively negotiated, he had spent as little time on court as was necessary and he had match point wrapped up just minutes before the rain came.

Murray beat his compatriot Liam Broady 6-2, 6-3, 6-4, putting the world No.235 in his place as the form book suggested he should but doing so in a way that would not demoralise his friend and sometime practice partner. Murray knows Broady, he likes Broady but he needed to remove him with the minimum of fuss – the Scot has far bigger fish to fry in SW19 this fortnight if he is to achieve his goal of winning the title.

Broady had tried to reassure himself with the thought that he had once – and only once – beaten the former champion at a spot of hit-and-giggle. Well, in as much as you can have hit-and-giggle with the ultra-competitive Scot.

Deep in the mists of time, Broady and Murray were playing ’11 out of the hand’ (no serve, hit the ball out of your hand and first one to 11 points claims the bragging rights), and Broady won.

“Although Andy will probably deny it,” Broady added. But Murray was not going to let anyone get the better of him so they played best of three. And in that, Murray won.

The world No.2 has always been competitive. Actually, it is more than that; it is a pathological loathing of losing.

He rather hopes that his baby daughter, Sophia, has not inherited that particular gene from her old man although, as he said with a perfectly straight face: “I’ve not tried doing anything competitive with her yet.”

That’s a relief given that she is not yet five months old. What did he have in mind? Competitive milk drinking?

Professional burbling (pre-Olympic trials)? And you will not want to be there when Sophia has grown up a bit and beats her dad at something. That will not be pretty.

Yet despite this competitive edge, Murray had not had the killer instinct at the French Open a few weeks back.

He needed 10 sets to get through the first two rounds – he was still adjusting to the conditions in the first round and was not feeling too well in the second – and even when he got the quarter-finals, he was struggling to slam the door shut on Richard Gasquet in the early stages.

By the time he got to the final, he had spent five hours longer on court than Novak Djokovic and that, Boris Becker mused a couple of weeks later, was the only difference between the top two men in the world that Sunday afternoon: Djokovic had more gas left in the tank.

So, onwards to Wimbledon and Murray promised that he would be a bit quicker off the mark this time. 

“My job is to learn from the French Open and one of the things I could have done better there is start the tournament quicker,” he said.

“Those first few days were tough, psychologically and physically ,and although I recovered from it, the match against Gasquet again was a match where I was 5-2 up in the first, 5-2 up in the second and I ended up being on court for an hour, an hour and 20 longer than I needed to in that match if I had just closed out those sets a little bit quicker. So that is something I will obviously try to learn from the French and try and start a little bit quicker at Wimbledon.” 

And, true to his word, he was like greased lightning, speeding past poor Broady in 102 minutes. After four minutes, the man from Stockport had won just one point and was already a break down. After 24 minutes he had won 12 points and was a set down. This was not going well for the underdog.

At the other end of the court, Murray was looking assured and very business-like. Reunited with Ivan Lendl, he has relished the chance to get the old team back together again.