The rewards in tennis can be huge but so are the physical demands. Andy Murray returned last week from his first holiday for six years, having taken a fortnight off following the Paris Masters, completed his commitments in the Aberdeen Cup exhibition tournament yesterday and will fly on Wednesday to the United States for four weeks of hard preparation for January's Australian Open.

Murray will work in California with Brad Gilbert, his coach, and Mark Grabow, his new fitness trainer, before going on to Nick Bollettieri's academy in Florida, where he will concentrate on improvements to his game.

"For the first couple of weeks I'll be focusing on my fitness, maybe practising for just an hour and a half a day but doing three hours of fitness work," he said. "I need to be able to last the long matches in Australia because it's so hot over there. You have to prepare for that pretty early. Maybe I didn't do that last year."

Murray went into the Scotland v England match in Aberdeen short of practice and admitted there were times during his highly competitive 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 victory over Greg Rusedski on Saturday night when he had to catch his breath.

"I hadn't been expecting to play at that high a standard," he said. "Greg hadn't played too many matches either and I was really surprised at how few unforced errors there were and how well both of us served."

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