Andy Murray makes positive start at Roland Garros and even gets a reaction from Ivan Lendl

When he took the second set as Murray faltered on Court Philippe Chatrier here, anything seemed possible. But the Scot regrouped quickly and in the third and fourth sets played some of the best tennis he has produced at any stage of the clay-court season as he earned himself a 6-4 4-6 6-2 6-0 victory.

“It was a decent start, considering obviously how I played in the build-up,” said Murray, who will meet Slovak Martin Klizan in round two tomorrow. “It definitely got better as it went on. I started to move a bit better towards the end. I was hitting the ball better when I was defending. That's something the last few weeks I haven't done so well and I didn't start off the match doing particularly well.

“But once I was getting a little bit more on my ball when I was defending, there weren’t too many openings for him in the points.”

Given all the concerns in the run-up to the tournament, from the state of his elbow, which had cost him practice time last month, to his health, with another illness interrupting preparations last week, Murray was pretty satisfied with his display.

In the first two sets, his attitude looked questionable, with numerous sarcastic smiles towards his player box, where Ivan Lendl, next to Jamie Delgado, looked on, unmoved.

It took the loss of the second set, as Kuznetsov hit hard, flat groundstrokes and attacked the Murray second serve, to really get him going.

At the start of the third set, Lendl, whose usually appears stone-faced at best, appeared to shout “Come on, Andy”, a rare incident, when he felt he needed to get involved.

It worked as Murray, feeding off the energy created by a brilliant piece of defence when he chased down a lob volley and sent up a sky-high lob that Kuznetsov netted, grew in confidence.

From that moment on, Kuznetsov, who reached the semi-final in Geneva last week, faded and Murray moved through the gears, hitting with more venom on his forehand, more accuracy on his backhand and more conviction on his second serve.

“Yeah it was a good get,” he said. “I thought when the lob went up, I wouldn't be able to reach it, but I did. I think he made a couple of simple errors after that. I got the break, and then obviously I didn't look back from there.”

Murray even looked to be enjoying himself as he reeled Kuznetsov into the net with a series of drop shots which were either winners or forced the Russian, out of his element in the forecourt, to cough up errors.

“It was good towards the end; it was better,” Murray said. “I still think I can do some things a bit better than I did today obviously.

“I will try to keep that going. I was just trying to get through the match today. I wasn't finding it funny or anything when I was out there. I was just trying to find a way to get through and as efficiently as possible. I did that in the end.”

With Jo Konta going out in the women’s event, Murray was the first Briton to get a win but that quickly became two as Kyle Edmund crushed Gastao Elias of Argentina 6-2 6-3 7-5, overcoming a mini-wobble in the third set.

Murray’s path to the latter stages was made a little smoother, in theory, when Alexander Zverev, the 20-year-old German, was beaten by Spain’s Fernando Verdasco.

Zverev won the title in Rome 10 days ago and had been tipped as a possible winner, not to mention a possible quarter-final opponent for Murray.

But in a match that had resumed at one set all from the previous night, Zverev made far too many mistakes and went down 6-3 3-6 6-4 6-2.

“I played absolute s***,” he said. “[That’s what] made the difference. It's quite simple.”

The 2015 champion, Stan Wawrinka cruised into round two, while Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal play their second-round matches today.