There was a touch of the Denis Laws about it as Andy Murray admitted that while the tennis world was transfixed it’s current leading player had remained detached.

Just as the Lawman headed for the golf course on that fateful afternoon when an England team containing some of his Manchester United clubmates won the World Cup in 1966, so Murray found something else to do as the men who dominated his sport when he was working his way through the ranks, reprised their greatest days with an epic encounter in Melbourne.

“I didn’t actually follow it that closely,” he said, when asked for his assessment of Roger Federer’s defeat of Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final.

“I saw a little bit. I didn’t see any of the final, I went away with my wife for a day. I saw some highlights of the last set when I got home and I saw little bits the week I got back but I didn’t see too much of the tennis.”

In other circumstances that could have fed the notion that there is no love lost between the two given that there were times in the past that there looked to be a certain coldness between them.

Understandably so, too, given the importance of their most famous encounters to the career of both men.

As the great rivalry between Federer and Rafael Nadal evolved into a four-way affair the Spaniard repeatedly found himself up against the Serb, the pair meeting in five Grand Slam finals between 2010 and 2012, but it was the man from Switzerland who repeatedly stood in the way of the young Scot and who also eventually had to give way to him.

Federer was the winner in Murray’s first two Grand Slam finals at the US Open in 2008 and the Australian Open in 2010, before the day when the emotional dam broke following the 2012 Wimbledon final, the therapeutic value of the right kind of tears becoming evident a few weeks later when the pair met on the same court and Murray claimed his career changing Olympic win.

With hindsight it seems reasonable to conclude that the edge that existed was down to the younger man’s determination not to be seen to be showing too much respect to any opponent, even one already widely considered to be on course to become their sport’s greatest player of all time when they first faced one another. However in welcoming the prospect of a first visit by Federer to Scotland, the depth of Murray’s respect was evident.

“I came on the tour and played him for the first time when I was 18, he was 24, he was obviously a great player then,” he said.

“There’s a six-year age gap but I feel like I’ve been competing against him for a large part of my career. He is someone I admire and I respect everything that he’s achieved and I’ve enjoyed watching him play some of the best matches of all time.

“(Andre) Agassi, he would have been the guy that I would have looked up to when I was younger, but Roger is definitely someone that I have learned a lot from during my career.”

As for that Australian Open win, Murray reckoned there had been plenty of evidence that, for all that it would have been impossible for him to re-establish the supremacy of a decade earlier when he was accruing the bulk of his titles, Federer was still capable of winning the biggest titles in the interim.

“You look at Roger’s results, there’s no reason why he couldn’t do it because he had been in the latter stages of the last few slams he has played, at Wimbledon last year he was pretty close to reaching the final there, at the Aussie open last year he made the semis, he made the semis of the last four slams that he competed in so he was getting right to the latter stages and it wasn’t like he was getting killed,” he pointed out.

“Maybe to expect him to win as consistently or as much as he had done before was too much but there was definitely a strong possibility that he could win more slams because of how good he is and how close he had been, he had shown at the Slams he was still getting right to the latter stages.”

While their competitive relationship is now very different to that when Murray was among the young pretenders to the throne, the regal way in which the man who reclaimed the Australian Open title last month has conducted himself still has the capacity to serve as an example.

Now in his 30th year and a year into fatherhood Murray is clearly pleased to be able to draw on the inspiration provided by the elder statesmen of the sport in looking to extend his own career.

“You can definitely look at some of the guys who are around just now. It is not just Roger who is playing great tennis at 33, 34, 35 of age,” Murray noted.

“There are a number of players up there just now. I feel ok just now physically.

“Obviously you can look as well at the break that him and Rafa both had. That can also prolong your career as well. Looking at certain periods during the year when you have extended breaks so that your body and mind recover and you relax a little bit.

“If you look at boxers – I know it is a quite different sport – they spend three or four months preparing for one fight whereas we are pretty much competing on a weekly basis playing loads of matches. That is something that maybe, as I get a bit older, that you look at and take a few more breaks during the year. I don't see why I can't keep competing at the highest level for the next few years.”

He has, however, also reached the stage where others can look to him for advice and while his new found responsibilities have not exactly becalmed him on court he is not quite the firebrand he once was and is consequently well placed to pass comment on the incident which confirmed, in his absence, Great Britain’s place in this year’s Davis Cup quarter-final when Canadian youngster Denis Shapalov defaulted after wildly lashing a ball into the face of the match umpire.

“For sure it is a wake-up call for all players,” said Murray.

“I have never seen anything like that before. I am still not sure exactly how he managed to do that. That is the thing isn't it with emotions. When someone drives in front of you in the road, sometimes for some people the tendency is to snap or swear or shout or scream or drive right up behind them.

“You can't always control your emotions and that is the situation that was close to being – it was a serious situation – but it was close to being very dangerous. The umpire was obviously very lucky but he is ok and Denis is lucky as well that he didn't do any more damage than he did.

“An incident like that you could suspend him, you could fine him more money but him actually doing that, I don't think you will see him ever do anything like that again. It will have been shocking to him, I am sure he totally regrets what he did and the embarrassment will almost be enough for him to learn from that and make sure it never happens again.”