He may have won everything there is to win in the sport, but Commonwealth Games double gold medallist Peter Nicol looked as hungry as ever yesterday in defeating his first round opponent Jonathan Kemp 3-1.

The 32-year old is in the middle of his last year as a professional, and having secured the golds he so desperately wanted in both the singles and the doubles Down Under, there were question marks coming into the Masters over whether the great man would have either the strength or the desire to play at his very best.

And those doubts were still legitimate ones during the opening game at the squash club in the early afternoon, when Kemp ? the world number 31 ? came out all guns blazing, battering Nicol into submission with a succession of scorching winners to take the first game 11-2.

Kemp kept up the pressure in the second game as well, playing at a furious pace and taking the ball so early that Nicol had to call upon all of his legendary retrieval skills to keep himself in the points.

The speed of play was breathtaking and relentless ? the long, dark-haired Kemp battering the ball from the T and Nicol stretching desperately into all four corners of the court in an effort to keep the ball alive.

At six-all, the game could have gone either way, although the enthusiastic crowd could have been forgiven for assuming that the perennial world number one would begin to wilt under the barrage.

But displaying the incomparable mental toughness for which he is so famously associated, Nicol stubbornly dug in, making hardly any mistakes while putting more and more pressure on his opponent to finish the rally off.

It was this discipline that made the difference, as Kemp committed a number of unforced errors to hand Nicol the game 11-6.

If the quality of the squash was high in the first two games, in the third it was superlative.

Though Kemp began where he left off in the second with a spree of sloppy errors when determined consistency was the name of the game ? allowing Nicol an early 5-1 lead ? he fought back well to take the score to nine-all.

A lucky let call for Nicol at the front of the court when a stroke to his opponent seemed a certainty kept him in the game, before the players traded points to take it to a tiebreak.

Nicol then had game-ball at 13-12 - and clinched it spectacularly when he dived full length to pick up a ball in the backhand corner before slicing a forehand cross court into the nick.

With the bit between his teeth, Nicol went ruthlessly about his business in the early stages of the fourth, and Kemp looked dead and buried at 8-2 down.

Showing impressive grit, however, the young Englishman refused to submit meekly and fought his way back to 9-7 with a collection to typically powerful winners which Nicol could do little about.

Yet just when the momentum looked to be shifting back in Kemp?s favour, Nicol unnerved his opponent by keeping the ball consistently tight ? ultimately taking the game 11-8 and bringing to an end a hugely entertaining encounter.

?That was an extremely hard first round,? said Nicol, who though winding down his career, is still ranked seven in the world.

?Jonathan came out and played unbelievably well and whereas he used to play like that for a game and then make lots of mistakes, this time he kept it up for about two and half games and made it extremely difficult for me.

?Obviously the Commonwealth Games was such a massive thing for me and I haven?t really had time to think much about squash since it finished. But I thought I played well today. I moved well and was hitting the ball solidly so I?m pretty pleased. I?ve played a lot of squash in the last few weeks so we?ll have to wait and see whether I can sustain it both mentally and physically over the course of this week.?

In the day?s other three games, England?s Lee Beachill ? winner of the inaugural Bermuda Open in 2004 ? coasted to victory over Dan Jenson of Australia 12-10, 11-6, 11-6 while Karim Darwish defeated fellow Egyptian Hisham Mohd Ashour 11-1, 11-4, 11-5 in only 23 minutes.

Finally, the French number two and world number 12 Gregory Gaultier made light work of the challenge of Australia?s Joe Kneipp, defeating the world number 29 in three, 11-5, 11-7, 11-2.