Murray marches on

The British number one, who also reached the third round in Monte Carlo last month, put in a dominant showing and looked in control throughout the match.

Simon won the only previous meeting between the pair in Rome last year in three sets and would have been expected to provide Murray with a stern test, but found the Scotsman in fine form.

Murray began in the best possible fashion by breaking Simon's opening service game thanks to a trademark precision lob. He followed that up by holding his own serve comfortably but the Frenchman immediately hit back with a love game of his own.

But, a day before his 21st birthday, the world number 14 was clearly in a hurry and quickly racked up another break of serve to establish a 4-1 lead in double-quick time.

Murray had looked impressive in his 6-4 6-1 first-round victory over Dmitry Tursunov on Monday with the harder Hamburg clay more to the Scot's liking. Simon managed to stem the tide by taking his first break point to reduce the arrears to a single break.

But Murray ended the 23-year-old's winning run by holding his next service game and a forehand winner brought up two set points as Simon again struggled to dominate on his serve. The world number 35 saved one with a thumping forehand but Murray found the baseline at 30-40 to seal the set 6-3.

The Scot then won his third game in a row to get off the mark in the second set before Simon, who has two ATP Tour titles to his name, levelled.

The pair traded service holds but Simon's improved form came to a shuddering halt in the eighth game as a series of errors followed by an exquisite drop shot from Murray handed the Scot a 5-3 lead.

It looked like Murray would waste the opportunity to clinch victory at the earliest opportunity when he slipped to 0-40 but five successive points wrapped things up as the match ended, like so many of the points, with a Simon error.