Andy Murray progresses in Madrid, still questions wild cards given to Maria Sharapova

World number one Andy Murray advanced to the third round of the Madrid Open after his win over Romania's Marius Copil on Tuesday (9 May).

After a slow start, the Briton was able to comfortably defeat Copil 6-4, 6-3 in his quest to turn an injury-filled and inconsistent year around.

The 29-year-old will now face either Borna Coric or Pierre-Hugues Herbert in the last 16.

Following the match, Murray spoke about returning from an elbow injury and how he has improved his serve in an important period of the season.

"The last few weeks my serve hasn't gone particularly well," Murray said, as quoted on BBC. "Obviously when I was coming back from my elbow injury that was the one thing that I wasn't able to practise in my time off and that showed a bit in my matches.

"I was broken six times in one match, seven in another. I wanted to come here, serve a little bit better and I did that today. Today was the start and I have to get better, but at least I gave myself the chance to play another match in a couple of days. It is a very, very important period of the year."

Murray also spoke about the news that Maria Sharapova will receive a wild card for the Aegon Classic. He had previously spoken in March about how he felt players returning from a ban should have to work their way back.

Sharapova, who was given wild cards for the Porsche Grand Prix, Madrid Open and the Italian Open following a 15-month suspension, has now been given a wild card by the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) for the upcoming Aegon Classic in June.

"I've spoken about this at length pretty much for 15 months now," Murray added, as quoted on BBC. "I feel like I've made myself pretty clear how I felt about that. I do think the tournaments clearly are going to do what they think is going to sell the most tickets, give them the most coverage, get the most people into watch."

"I'm sure the LTA saw the coverage that was given to last night's match and was given to Maria's run in Stuttgart as well - the amount of media that were over there covering it - and think that's what's best for the tournament in Birmingham. But I'm sure it split a lot of opinion.

"I'm sure the discussions about whether to give it or not were long and I'm sure there were some disagreements."