Murray confident of improving poor Australian record

MELBOURNE, Jan 9 (Reuters) Strutting into Melbourne on the back of a career-high ranking of 15th, Andy Murray hopes he can improve on last year's first-round exit at the Australian Open.

The Scottish teenager will be confident of making it deeper into the draw when the grand slam begins on Monday having reached the Doha final last weekend where he lost to Ivan Ljubicic.

''It was obviously a good tournament, I played well. Last year I did pretty badly, so it was good to be in my first final (so early in the season),'' the 19-year-old said as he prepared to take part in the invitational Kooyong Classic.

For the past six months he has been working with Brad Gilbert, Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick's former mentor, and Murray credited the American coach for his swift rise up the rankings.

Gilbert guided Roddick to his sole grand slam success at the 2003 US Open less than three months after they hooked up and Murray is hoping he too will soon reap the rewards of having Gilbert in his camp.

''He's been great. He's definitely helped me a lot in knowing how to match my strengths up against my opponents' weaknesses,'' said Murray.

''By the way my ranking has been going, you can see that he's been good, and I'm definitely not tired of him yet.

''It's been a really good kind of six or seven months, I hope it will continue.'' REUTERS PDS VV1556