Great Britain survived a scare to get their Hopman Cup campaign off to a winning start with a narrow defeat of Kazakhstan at the Burswood Dome in Perth.
With the tie level going into the mixed doubles Andy Murray and Laura Robson had to save a match point in the third-set tiebreaker before finally clinching the match 6-2, 5-7, 7-6 (12-10) against the eight-nation tournament's lowest-seeded team.
Under tournament rules the third set in the mixed doubles is decided by the first team to reach 10 points with a two-point advantage, and after a closely-fought finale it was Great Britain who won when Andrey Golubev hit a Robson serve long.
Robson had earlier lost her singles match 4-6, 6-3, 6-0 to a flu-ridden Yaroslava Shvedova before Murray levelled matters with a routine 6-2 6-2 win over Golubev.
For Murray it was a chance to ease his way back into action as he began his preparations for this month's Australian Open by breezing past Golubev, the world's 133rd ranked player, in just 61 minutes.
The Scot is playing in Perth this week to acclimatise early to hot conditions in Australia and under the round-robin format of the tournament is assured of playing at least three singles matches as well as three mixed doubles matches alongside Robson.
The world number four did not, however, need to raise a sweat in his first match of the new year as he lost just one point on his service in an opening set that lasted just 28 minutes.
Murray spent the past three weeks in Miami undergoing an intensive training regime as he attempts to break his grand slam duck and there were signs it will stand him in good stead as he chased down anything Golubev managed to throw at him.
He showed impressive speed to reach a Golubev drop shot and raised the cheers of the crowd with an unlikely winner down the line.
But for the most part there was little else to trouble Murray as Golubev meekly surrender the match with a double fault.
"I played really well. It's a really good atmosphere out there and I'm happy with the way I played," Murray said.
"I felt like I moved well from the start of the match, which you always take a bit of time right at the start of the year. But I moved well.
"It was a perfect start to the new year."
Murray's victory set up a live mixed doubles and despite the Scot describing himself as "rubbish" at the format he and Robson, seven years his junior, raced into a 5-0 first-set lead before clinching it.
Murray, who announced this week he would skip the Davis Cup tie against Lithuania in March, proved his desire to compete for Great Britain as he threw himself about and at one stage crashed into an advertising board on the side of the court.
But Kazakhstan levelled the match at a set apiece to take the match into a third-set tiebreaker where Great Britain edged the tense finale.
Earlier, Robson missed the opportunity to claim the opening rubber after winning the opening set and seeing Shvedova call for a five-minute medical time-out at the change as she struggled with illness.
But Shvedova, the world number 52, rallied admirably thereafter as it was Robson who instead faded.
The 15-year-old then showed her inexperience as she succumbed to some clever strokeplay from Shvedova who won the final eight games to close out the contest.
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