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Andy Murray's quest for a first Grand Slam title is gathering velocity.

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So much so that the top-ranked Brit, who scored a 6-1 6-4 6-3 second round victory over Marc Gicquel, said he was more troubled by Melbourne Park's mercurial weather conditions than he was by his French opponent.

"The wind was the trickiest part because it's kind of like a bowl, the (wind) kind of gets trapped in there and swirls around," said Murray after his one-hour, 50-minute victory. "Sometimes you think the ball is going one direction, and the wind is going one direction and then in the middle of the point it can change pretty quickly. That was tough. But I was happy with the way I played."
 
As if inspired by the wind that supposedly troubled him out on Margaret Court Arena, Murray veritably whistled through the opening set of the contest against the 57th-ranked Gicquel.

Showcasing the full extent of his cat-and-mouse playing style, Murray mixed patient rallying with some well-placed drop-shots off both wings to take a one set to love lead in just 24 minutes.

It was canny use of the prevailing weather conditions. "When you're drop-shotting into the wind, it's a good play. If you're drop-shotting when you have the wind, you know, you can't really get any backspin on the ball, so the ball tends to shoot through. It's a lot easier for the opponent to get through. (I) drop-shotted well, especially at the start of the match," he said.

If the wind was Murray's toughest opponent on Margaret Court Arena, then his serve came a close second. His opening deliveries dipped as low as 39 per cent during the match. Nevertheless, he was able to limit his double fault count to two and to conjure up 10 aces, many of which came on the rare occasions that Gicquel managed to apply some pressure on his serve.

It is illustrative of Murray's breezy demeanor in the early stages of this, his 17th Grand Slam campaign, that he laughed off an enquiry as to whether he was disappointed to have been taken to deuce on serve a couple of times.

"Yeah, how terrible," he grinned, to the amusement of the assembled media. "I mean, this is the highest level of the sport. That's gonna happen. But I played two matches and got broken twice, you know, once in each match. (I) served better today than I did the first day. I'm sure I'll serve better in the next round than I did today.”

Men's doubles champion at the Brisbane International for a second consecutive year a couple of weeks ago, Gicquel is no slouch on the blue Plexicushion, but the Frenchman could do little more than batten down the hatches in the face of Hurricane Murray, managing to convert just one of seven break points in the match while surrendering his own serve six times.

With the atmosphere around Margaret Court Arena charged by the cheers of an evenly divided band of British and French supporters, the second and third sets were closer, Gicquel managing to reclaim a lost service break in the sixth game of the third set before taking a 4-3 lead. But Murray was soon on the attack once more, breaking again and then never looking back.

"(The) first set was good and then it was tough after that," said Murray. "I came through a couple of tough moments early in the second set - down 0-40 on my serve - and managed to hold there.

"He started to play better at that stage and came through that well. It was a good performance, solid match, under difficult conditions.”