Seven-time Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship winner Roger Federer eased into the second round with a comfortable victory over Benoit Paire.
The Swiss, seeded third, took just 54 minutes as he won 6-1 6-3 in his first competitive outing since winning last month's Australian Open.
Federer's serve was unaffected by the lay-off as he won 70 per cent of his service points and broke his French opponent in both sets twice to set up a meeting with the winner of the all-Russian match between Mikhail Youzhny and qualifier Evgeny Donskoy.
"I think I returned very well for a first round. I was able to get my second serves in deep, was able to go into the offensive quickly," Federer told a press conference.
"I didn't have to move that much. It was very quick rallies so we'll see how that's going to turn out.
"But obviously it couldn't be a better first round for me here in Dubai and I'm glad to be back."
Fourth seed Gael Monfils took 80 minutes to see off Egyptian wildcard Mohamed Safwat, eventually winning 6-4 6-3.
Earlier in the day Germany's Philipp Kohlschreiber, who is now two away from a 400th win of his career, dispatched eighth seed Gilles Muller 6-4 7-6 (7/1).
"Hopefully I can achieve the mark here in this tournament. It would be great (and) mean I'm in the semi-finals," he said.
Spaniards Roberto Bautista Agut, Marcel Granollers and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez are all into the second round after victories over Russian Karen Khachanov, the Czech Republic's Jiri Vesely and Serbia's Viktor Troicki respectively.
