Cameron Norrie avenged his fellow Brit Kyle Edmund with a straightforward victory over France's Alexandre Muller in the second round of the Italian Open on Friday.
Qualifier Muller had ended Edmund's journey in Rome in the first round, but he could not make lightning strike twice against Norrie, who prevailed 6-2 6-3 in one hour and 14 minutes.
On the back of a third-round exit at the Madrid Open, Norrie won 74% of points on his first serve and quickly assumed control of the match following a pair of opening holds for both men.
Having taken a 3-2 lead in the first set, Norrie powered his way to a break in the sixth game before doing so again in game eight, capitalising on errors off the Muller racquet while the Frenchman was serving to stay in the set.
Muller dug deep during the opening exchanges of the second set and brought up his first break point of the match in the third game, although it was swiftly beaten away by Norrie.
Another unforced error from Muller handed Norrie three break points at 0-40 in the eighth game, and while the Frenchman managed to save two of them, Norrie converted his third to move one game away from a place in round three.
Despite posting his first double fault of the match in the next game, the British number one held to 30 to set up a third-round battle with Hungary's Marton Fucsovics, who defeated Australian 17th seed Alex de Minaur in straight sets.
Elsewhere, home favourite Jannik Sinner defeated Australian Thanasi Kokkinakis 6-1 6-4, but Canadian 10th seed Felix Auger-Aliassime went down 4-6 6-4 5-7 to Alexei Popyrin, while women's top seed Iga Swiatek trounced Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-0 6-0.
Ben Knapton
