Andy Murray vows to win grand slam title

Andy Murray said he came away from the Australian Open feeling "much more positive" about his game despite failing to reach the final.

The British number one lost in the semi-final of last month's grand slam tournament to eventual winner Novak Djokovic in a five-hour match.

Despite the loss, the 24-year-old said it was a "huge turnaround" from the previous year when he lost the final in straight sets.

Murray, who is ranked number four in the world, was speaking during an event at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

He was on stage with his tennis coach mother Judy and brother Jamie, who is a former Wimbledon mixed doubles champion.

Opening the talk with a reflection on the semi-final encounter less than two weeks ago, Andy said: "It was a long, long match. One of the longest I have ever played on the tour and probably one of the highest standards as well.

"I feel way, way better coming away from the Australian Open this year than I did last year and much, much more positive about my game and the future. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the year now."

He said he felt he made "a big improvement in Australia" and when reminded about his failure to win a grand slam title he simply replied: "I am going to win one."

During the 90-minute discussion, the audience heard stories of growing up playing tennis in Dunblane and the trips up and down motorways to various competitions.

Andy, who moved to Spain when he was 15 to train, also talked about the need for more public tennis courts in the UK.

He said: "With tennis especially, it's not so easy where you can just go out in a field and kick a football around or whatever.

"You need to have the facilities and I think that's something we could do a better job with in this country, with making it a lot more accessible for kids to play so they can just go out of their house and find public courts where they can have racquets and balls they can use because right now it's still a little bit difficult."

The talk was part of a series run by Set4Sport, a programme from Judy, supported by RBS, which showcases easy ideas for parents to play with their children and develop sporting skills.

Audience members asked the Murray family questions such as how they could keep their own children interested in sport when they reached their teenage years.

Andy said: "With mum, it was just about fun. We weren't getting pushed to go play tennis, it wasn't like 'this is the only thing you can do' and 'you must be tennis players'.

"I've seen it myself, I've been around a lot of players where their parents put so much pressure on them and when they lose their parents get angry and the kids start to go on the courts scared or nervous.

"I don't really think we had that, it was a huge sacrifice for mum and dad to take us around and without them we wouldn't have been able to do it but there was never any pressure from them for us to do it and I think that is really, really important."

PA