Nick Kyrgios had plenty of fun in the first round of the Australian Open but Daniil Medvedev will be a more serious test

Subtlety, self-control and efficiency are three qualities not regularly associated with Nick Kyrgios, but they came to the fore in his Australian Open first-round victory over British qualifier Liam Broady on Tuesday night.

The memorable moments were what Kyrgios's fans have come to expect:risky tweeners followed by majestic, curling forehand winners down the line; inside-out winners from impossible angles; and in the opening minutes of the match, a lairy tweener serve followed by a 220kph thunderbolt that almost flattened Broady.

In quieter, tougher moments, Kyrgios belied his lack of match practice and played with guile.

Nick Kyrgios shows few ill effects from recently testing positive to COVID-19, as he books a match-up with world number two Daniil Medvedev at Melbourne Park, while Alex de Minaur also moves through to the second round.

The first and second sets started on Broady's racquet and Kyrgios applied stifling pressure, breaking on both occasions to tilt the momentum beyond Broady's control.

In the third set, the crunch moment came in Broady's second service game and again Kyrgios held his nerve.

Throughout, both players knew it was a long shot that Broady could ever break back — Kyrgios underlined that with six aces in his first nine serves of the night, and they kept coming.

Of course, you could say that the result — a 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 victory for Kyrgios — was a simple case of elite talent prevailing over journeyman grit. Broady's current ranking of 127 is a career-best and all else about him was cherubic and unthreatening.

But Kyrgios has lost before against less-credentialed opponents and he arrived in Melbourne this week on the back of an asthmatic episode with a COVID-19 chaser.

He is now a master of setting