Novak Djokovic opened up his season in Dubai with a 6-3 6-3 victory over Lorenzo Musetti.
The world number one broke on three occasions as he eased past the world number 58 in his opening match of the season.
Despite some rusty moments Djokovic controlled the match in front of a supportive Dubai crowd.
Next for Djokovic will be Karen Khachanov or Alex De Minaur in the next round.
Djokovic began the match in comfortable fashion as he was playing his first match since the Davis Cup Finals.
After two comfortable holds, Djokovic secured a long return game with a break as he took a 3-1 lead.
However having not played the first month of the season, due to circumstances regarding his vaccination, Djokovic was rusty on serve especially when it came to his smashes.
Musetti did well to create three break points but couldn’t seal the break as some clutch serving gave Djokovic the 4-1 lead.
From then on it was big serving and first strike tennis as the world number one closed out the opening set to love in 37 minutes.
The second set began in a similar fashion to the first with some clean groundstrokes causing Musetti problems especially on the backhand side.
A break to love in the third game put Djokovic in cruise control for a 2-1 lead as the Italian couldn’t keep his unforced error count down.
In the sixth game, Djokovic was put through his toughest game of the match as Musetti was more aggressive with the Serb making uncharacteristic unforced errors.
It brought out tension from the world number one as he shouted towards his coaches box that was led by Goran Ivanisevic.
Djokovic saved four break points as Musetti couldn’t take advantage and that would eventually end up costing the Italian.
The world number 58 continued to overcommit with his shots and Djokovic broke for a third time in the match to seal his place in the second round.
Overall a clean match from Djokovic with a few rusty moments that the world number one will be looking to clean up over the course of the week.
Djokovic now faces Karen Khachanov or Alex De Minaur in the second round with Doha champion Roberto Bautista Agut potentially awaiting in the last eight.
