Andy Murray's performance wins new royal fan

We'd been led to believe that The Queen was not a huge fan of tennis; nor Andy Murray of the monarchy. But there was no doubt that the British number one had converted a new royal fan on Centre Court today after his straight sets demolition of Jarkko Nieminen.

Much had been made of whether Murray would bow properly and on the day he began smoothly with a courteous lowering of the head alongside his opponent once both he and Nieminen had daintily discarded their oversized racket bags.

Indeed it was Tim Henman sitting directly behind the Queen in the Royal Box who seemed to be afflicted by the royal visitor. He could be seen giggling away like a nervous schoolboy and seemed to receive Murray's bow as much as Her Majesty.

So close was Henman to the Queen that she could hear his every whisper and he duly spent much of the match waving to friends and fiddling with his cuffs.

By contrast Murray seemed nerveless. Despite a sluggish start he soon moved through the gears even marshalling his own anger at one error to a mere thump of the racket on the turf.

Indeed when Murray had to change his racket because of a broken string it was because of one of his own fierce shots rather than any tantrum related incident.

The Queen doesn't really do applause. So when Murray won the second set with some running, scrambling tennis it earned no more than a slight scratch of the royal nose.

But by the end of the game the Queen had been well and truly won over applauding warmly when Murray won in straight sets.

One radio commentator suggested that Murray had kept himself on his best behaviour because of the arrival of his agent Simon Fuller. But there was no doubting which boss Murray had really won over and she lives in Buckingham Palace and not LA.