The mercury peaked at 41.2C (106.2F) here, just touching the wooden benches at Kooyong left red scorch marks on the palms of your hands and many of the older folk could tolerate a couple of games at a time before retiring to the shade. The warm-up for the Australian Open became more of a fry-up yesterday, yet nothing could disturb the good humour and equilibrium of Andy Murray.

When he trailed Ivan Ljubicic, of Croatia, by a set and 3-0 in his second round-robin match at the AAMI Classic, it would have been easy for the British No 1 to choose the option of accepting his fate and returning to the sanctuary of the locker-room in the knowledge that he had lived to play another day. But Murray then remembered that losing has never been something that appealed to him, whatever the conditions, and that this was why he had spent December in Florida, going through hell in the hothouse.

It was best to be as prepared as possible for days such as this. Days when the ice-cream salesman cannot cope, the bottles of water have been snapped up before the poor guy had the chance to stock the fridge with them, when anything less than a factor 15 sunscreen is not worth putting on your skin. Boy was it warm.

And yet, after his 6-7, 6-4, 6-2 victory over the former world No 3, Murray claimed not to have noticed that much that the blueness of the court was matched by an uninterrupted blueness in the sky. True, his fluid container had not stuck to the court surface, so the conditions could not have been that bad and his job was to concentrate on the task in hand, not keep wondering why it was too warm even for Melbourne’s notoriously stubborn fly population to hang around one’s face too long.

The tournament, in which he has one more match to play, is an exhibition event, albeit one with a stellar field. It is difficult to know how seriously to take these affairs because one can never be certain how committed the players are. Yesterday, for the most part, Murray’s face was wreathed in smiles; this a young man who is loving every minute of what he is trying to do.

Last year in Kooyong, Brad Gilbert, his former coach, was in attendance with his wife and children. This time Murray’s corner is stacked with coaches, fitness trainers and those fellow players for whom it can only help to be around the British No 1, not only to sustain his spirits but to hope that something of his unalloyed certainty rubs off on them.

Being a part of the crew is a good thing now. One wondered if Murray had ever entered a grand-slam tournament — this will be his ninth — more content with his lot. The answer was a crisp “no”, which spoke volumes. “Probably the past couple of years, I was training just to be in shape for the start of the year,” he said. “But now that my ranking is high enough \ and I feel like I’ve got quite a lot of experience playing at the highest level, I want to be in the best shape possible for the grand-slams and Masters events, because now I’m confident that I can go deep into the tournaments, whereas a couple of years ago I wasn’t that confident.”

The surface has a new colour and a new texture, which does not suit everyone but has a fairness about it. It ought to suit all styles. The players are troubled more by the Wilson balls that have a tendency to fluff up and expand after particularly intense top-spin exchanges. Rafael Nadal, the world No 2 from Spain, has pronounced himself dissatisfied with the quality of the balls and he hits with more ferocious spin than most.

Nadal looked lean and intense as he stood chatting in the bowels of Melbourne Park yesterday, the best place to be, with air-conditioning on tap. All around him players were suffering. In the first round of the women’s qualifying event, Katie

O’Brien, from Yorkshire, who has just recovered from shingles, and Elena Baltacha, her compatriot, who strikes every ball as if life depends on it, were beneficiaries of opponents stricken by the conditions.

O’Brien led by a set and a break of serve when Darya Kustova, of Belarus, called the doctor and said that she could not continue; Baltacha won the first set 6-0 against Virginie Pichet from France, who shouted out: “I want to retire.” Five games later she did.