Andy confident of halting slide

The RBS-sponsored player's second-round defeat by Mario Ancic in Miami will send him plummeting from 13th to a position outside the top 20.

However, the British number one, who missed much of last season to injury, has hardly any points to defend until the US Open at the end of August.

Murray said: "Obviously, my ranking's going to drop a bit now, but I've got a long time until I've got to defend points again."

Murray did not win a match on clay last year, losing to Gilles Simon in Rome and then retiring hurt against Filippo Volandri in Hamburg. But the 20-year-old will be hoping to perform much better on the surface – starting in Valencia on April 14.

One of the knock-on effects of the Scot's slip in the rankings means he's unlikely to be seeded for the next Masters Series event, in Monte Carlo in April – and could face a tough draw.

"Hopefully I'll be refreshed and feeling good for the clay-court stretch because I think it's a surface that I can play well on," he added. "But I need to make sure I'm well prepared."

One of the areas of his game that Murray will need to work on will be his serve, which he admitted let him down against Ancic in Miami.

Murray, who was seeded 13th, did manage to fight back from a terrible start to take the second-round match to a deciding tie-break in a tense final set, but he squandered an opportunity to win the match and served a double fault to lose 6-2, 2-6, 7-6.

"That was just a bad serve," Murray told www.atptennis.com. "It was the first time on tour that I've lost a match when I've had match points, so that's pretty disappointing."

He added: "I didn't serve well the whole match, so I probably wasn't feeling as confident as I normally would at that stage."