ANDY MURRAY has been given a walkover into the third round of the Barcelona Open after Bernard Tomic pulled out with a back problem.
Murray had been due to face the Australian yesterday lunchtime having been given a bye in the first round.
But shortly before the start of play the tournament announced that Tomic, who defeated American Dustin Brown in three sets in the first round, had withdrawn.
Although the easy progress is positive news on the surface for Murray, the world No.1 entered the tournament to get more matches under his belt as he works back from an elbow injury.
The Scot returned to action last week in Monte Carlo after more than a month on the sidelines but, having beaten Gilles Muller in his opening match, lost to Albert Ramos-Vinolas.
Murray will play the winner of a clash between Spaniards Albert Montanes and Feliciano Lopez in the third round.
British No 3 Dan Evans is also through to the third round after picking up his first ATP Tour wins on clay and will face fourth seed Dominic Thiem on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Aljaz Bedene won his 14th straight match, beating Robin Haase to reach the quarter-finals of the Hungarian Open. The British No.4 won back-to-back titles on the ATP Challenger Tour before coming through qualifying in Budapest.
After beating Marius Copil in round one, Bedene continued his impressive form with a 6-4 6-4 victory over Dutchman Haase. The world No.68 put a lot of pressure on Haase’s serve, taking two of nine break points in the match while saving the only one he faced.
Bedene will face either second seed Ivo Karlovic or Bosnia’s Damir Dzumhur in the last eight.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here