From: http://www.sportinglife.com/tennis/news/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME=tennis/06/05/18/TENNIS_Murray_Blake.html

Andy Murray needs a coach who "lives and dies with every match" to harness his undoubted talent.

That is the view of world number seven James Blake, who eliminated the 19-year-old from the Hamburg Masters on Wednesday 6-3 6-3.

The Scot, who axed coach Mark Petchey last month, struggled badly to get his serve going but in fairness his American opponent returned phenomenally well and looked for all the world like a seasoned clay-court player.

Blake by contrast has benefited from a long association with coach Brian Barker and clearly sees the advantage of having someone close to him who knows what makes him tick.

"It makes such a big difference for me because he knows my game better than anyone in the world," Blake said.

"We're so comfortable; sometimes he knows not to say anything, sometimes he knows when he has to say a lot.

"So it's a really good feeling to have someone who knows what I'm going through out there and really does care about what's going on."

He told Sky Sports: "You see some of the coaches in the locker room and they barely even care if their player wins or loses but Brian is not like that.

"He lives and dies with every one of my matches, just the same way I do, and it's a great feeling to have someone like that in your corner."

Blake is convinced Murray has the game to make it to the very top, adding: "He's already, without having the meat on his bones, in the top 50 in the world and once he gets a little bigger, a little more on his serve and a couple more weapons he's going to be dangerous.

"He sees the court very well, he moves very well, he's got great hands and he kind of looks like (Andre) Agassi in the manner that he doesn't move as much as his opponent usually and Agassi does that by just pounding people.

"Andy does it with his hands, if he's already got those, it's something you can't teach and can't learn. I think he's going to be dangerous on any surface in the years to come."

For his part, Murray insisted he had no answer on this occasion to Blake's unerring accuracy on return of serve.

"I've seen him in a lot of matches step in and whack returns off second serve but never as consistently as that," said the British number two.

"He barely missed a return, every time I served to his forehand he whacked it back. On big points it's difficult to decide whether to serve into his forehand because you know it's going to come back twice as fast.

"It was really tough because he hardly missed a return. He was so aggressive from the baseline."