World No 4 Andy Murray says he sacked his coach Miles Maclagan because they no longer saw eye-to-eye and he needed to do something to help galvanize his game.

Murray fired Maclagan this week after two-and-a-half years of working together. The surprise move comes just four weeks before the start of the US Open.

"It obviously was a hard decision and one that wasn't the nicest thing to have to take," Murray said on Wednesday in between practice rounds at the ATP Los Angeles tournament. "It wasn't that tough to make up my mind because we were quite far apart in what we thought."

It has been a season of mixed results for the Scot who is the top seed at the Farmers Classic, his first tournament since his Wimbledon semi-final loss to Rafael Nadal. "I lost direction a little bit," Murray said of his progress this season.

For now, Murray plans to work with former Spanish star Alex Corretja pending the appointment of a new coach.

"It wasn't necessarily something that Miles wasn't bringing," Murray said. "We had a chat when we were in Miami about how we saw things. We all saw things pretty differently."

"Between the three of us, we obviously had different ideas and different ways of seeing things what I felt was beneficial to me and what Miles and Alex felt was beneficial to me. The last few years have gone very, very well. But I want to try and get to No 1 in the world and try to win Grand Slams."

Murray is still waiting to break his Grand Slam duck and it remains to be seen if the sacking Maclagan so close to the season's final major championship pays dividends.

Murray, who is also looking for his first title of 2010, has finished runner-up in the 2010 Australian Open and 2008 US Open. Besides making it to the final of the Aussie Open, Murray reached the semis of the French Open this year.

Murray's first match will be against American Tim Smyczek.In Wednesday action, Germany's Rainer Schuettler triumphed over American Robby Ginepri 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, third seed Marcos Baghdatis rallied to beat Ryan Sweeting 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 and Serbian sixth seed Janko Tipsarevic stopped India's Somdev Devvarman 7-6 (9/7), 6-2.

In second round singles play, American second seed Sam Querrey defeated Kevin Anderson of South Africa 7-6 (10/8), 4-6, 6-0.

AFP