ANDY MURRAY has been seeded 15th for next week's Australian Open in Melbourne after his recent good form edged him up the world rankings.

The Dunblane teenager reached the final of his first event of the year in Qatar last week and is gearing up for the first Grand Slam of the season in the Kooyong exhibition tournament Down Under.

Murray will face Roger Federer in the final of the event if he beats Andy Roddick tomorrow.

World No.1 Federer is through in Melbourne after defeating Russia's Marat Safin 6-3, 7-6.

Defending Australian Open champion Federer showed a marked improvement on his display against Czech Radek Stepanek yesterday and will now face either Roddick or Murray on Saturday.

Croatian Ivan Ljubicic beat German Tommy Haas 7-6, 6-4 and Stepanek beat Chile's Fernando Gonzalez 6-4, 7-6.

In Australian Open qualifying, Paisley's Alan Mackin sent Italian top seed Davide Sanguinetti spinning out in the first round with a 6-3, 6-3 victory and he will now face the USA's Alex Bogomolov Jnr as he edges closer to the main draw.

However, Broomhill's Jamie Baker fell at the first hurdle, losing out 6-2, 6-4 to South African No.16 seed Wesley Moodie.

Meanwhile, world No.3 Nikolay Davydenko has been fined £5000 for making negative comments about the tournament in Sydney.

The Russian said some of the sport's top players had pulled out because they did not care about the event.

Davydenko exited the competition yesterday after losing the first set of his second-round match with Frenchman Paul Henri-Mathieu, citing a foot injury that doctors fear may be a stress fracture.

Should the injury be confirmed as a fracture, Davydenko faces six weeks out of the game.

He was the fifth player to retire from the Sydney event in 24 hours.

In the women's draw, Belgium's Kim Clijsters book her place in the final against in-form Serb Jelena Jankovic after beating China's Li Na.

Third seed Clijsters won 6-1, 1-6, 7-5, while Jankovic beat eighth-seeded Nicole Vaidisova of the Czech Republic 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.