Andy Murray puts rest on pause after winning return

“We spoke about it and obviously it would be disappointing if I was to get to that position and not be able to play the final, but I also said I’d be way more disappointed winning the Australian Open and missing the birth of my child”.

In the day’s other game, Serena Williams was sidelined with a knee injury and her replacement Vicky Duval was unable to prevent the United States losing 2-1 to Ukraine.

The world No 2 picked up where he left off in the second set, racing to a 0-40 lead on the De Schepper serve, easily converting the break before holding his own serve to go 2-0 up.

Heather Watson now plays Caroline Garcia in the women’s singles.

Williams expects to return on Tuesday for the next round-robin fixture against Australia Gold. “I’ve been struggling and I don’t know exactly why that it is, but I get on the match court and it’s different”, he said. “I had every intention to play this morning”.

Murray is a four-time Australian Open runner-up and looks on track to at least get that far again.

Duval only returned to tennis in August after overcoming Hodgkin’s lymphoma and has a career high ranking of 87.

Broady – ranked 122 in the world – will face former world number one Ana Ivanovic in the first round.

Great Britain will play Australia’s Nick Kyrgios and Daria Gavrilova in their next match on Wednesday.

Murray, who led Britain to their first Davis Cup triumph in 79 years just over a month ago, took under an hour to seal victory at the mixed team event.

And Murray then served out to wrap up victory inside 59 minutes.

That was pretty much the end of Brown, a qualifier for the tournament, and the contest.

It was the first ever meeting between the pair.

Previous year in Doha, Djokovic suffered a rare defeat, crashing out in the third round to Ivo Karlovic.