Murray appeared out-of-sorts on the Manalo Santana stadium in the first evening match on Thursday. The fourth seed could not produce the form that saw him reach the semi-finals of the recent Monte Carlo Masters and was comfortably dispatched by the 36th-ranked Brazilian.

Belluci won in one hour and 31 minutes and will now go on to face seventh-seeded Czech player Tomas Berdych in the quarter-finals after Berdych earlier defeated Juan Monaco of Argentina.

After the match, Murray told reporters he was happy with his game given his recent elbow injury:"I was hitting the ball decent, I think I can definitely get better. You just need to be quite cautious and not do too much too soon because then you take a step back, but I think I've judged it pretty well.

"I need to get my tennis back because that's the most important thing going into Rome and the French Open."