Andy Murray reached the quarter-finals of a tournament for the tenth time this year and moved to within three wins of retaining his St Petersburg Open title yesterday by breezing past Ernests Gulbis 6-4, 6-2.

The British No 1, the top seed, showed glimpses of his best form to beat the Latvian in just over an hour and next meets Janko Tipsarevic, of Serbia.

It was the ninth consecutive win for the US Open finalist, who also became the fifth player this year to win 50 matches. Murray, who on Sunday took his fourth title this season, the Mutua Madrileña Masters, won his first three games to love before saving a break point in his next service game. He broke Gulbis in the eighth game for a 5-3 lead but the Latvian broke back to love in the next. Murray immediately broke again to take the set and won four consecutive games in the second set to close out the match.

“He is very unpredictable in his game style,” Murray said. “He had a couple of good shots to break me, but I broke him in the next game, so it wasn’t a problem.”

Earlier, Marat Safin, the former world No 1 from Russia, slumped to a 6-4, 6-2 defeat by Andrey Golubev, a qualifier from Kazakhstan.