Murray Ready For Strong US Swing

© Getty ImagesAndy Murray is in Los Angeles with fitness trainer Jez Green this week.

World No. 4 Andy Murray will be looking to win his third ATP World Tour title in California this week as he makes his debut at the Farmers Classic, an ATP World Tour 250 hard-court tournament in Los Angeles.

A winner of 14 tour-level titles, Murray has lifted the 2006-07 SAP Open in ‘The Golden State’. The top-seeded wild card, who is the first Briton to compete in Los Angeles since Alex Bogdanovic three years ago, will meet Tim Smyczek on Thursday night.

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Murray, who parted company with his coach Miles Maclagan earlier this week, admitted he doesn’t think he needs to make big changes to his game to win a Grand Slam championship title.

“I just need to become a better player all around,” he said at the UCLA campus in Los Angeles on Wednesday. “I think it's easy to start over-thinking things and over-analysing things to try and find: Is there actually a problem there?

“I don't think there's a problem with my game. I just need to get better. That's something that maybe hasn't happened the last four or five months, something that hopefully by getting a new coach and a new sort of coaching team in place, that will help me do that, and hopefully achieve my goals.”

Murray reached his second major final at the Australian Open in January, when he lost to Roger Federer, and made a semi-final exit at Wimbledon (l. to Nadal) earlier this month.

The Scot admitted, “It has been a difficult year. Obviously Wimbledon and the Australian Open have been great. Apart from that, it's not been so good. You know, the sort of 18 months previous, before sort of Miami this year, I hadn't really played a bad tournament for a long, long time.

“I got into a little bit of a rut. I had a few bad tournaments. It's not necessarily a patience thing. Now I feel good again. I feel confident after the way Wimbledon went. I kind of saw what the problems were, what I needed to do to get back to playing top-three, top-four tennis again. I addressed it. I'm hoping I have another good hard-court stretch in the States.”

Prior to arriving in Los Angeles, Murray had been training from his US base in Miami, Florida. “The conditions over there have been really, really brutal,” he said. “It's incredibly hot, very humid.

“I got the call to see if I wanted to come. I'd never been to L.A. before. Obviously [Novak] Djokovic pulled out. I spoke to the guys, decided I wanted to come over here and spend a few days training.

“I'll [also] train here for a few more days after the tournament. I might stay here until Toronto (which begins on 9 August).”

The 23-year-old Murray has a 22-10 record on the season. Last year, he won an ATP World Tour-best six titles. He last lifted silverware at the Valencia Open 500 in November 2009.