AIDAN McHugh is speaking in self-deprecating terms about his hopes of filling an Andy Murray-sized void at the inaugural Glasgow Trophy tennis event in Scotstoun, which starts this week. “There is a slight quality gap from Andy to me,” the 17-year-old, who reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open juniors this January, tells the Herald. “But I will do my best.”

Sadly, the former World No 1 was unable to make his competitive return from a hip operation in this newly-created £72,000 Challenger Tour event in the city of his birth. Instead, that seems likely to take place on the grass courts of Rosmalen in the Netherlands in May, itself a tune-up for the traditional Wimbledon warm-up event at Queen’s Club.

But at least he knows a man who can in the form of his young protege McHugh. Not only was the 17-year-old one of the first signings to Murray’s 77 Sports Management and mentorship firm, these two Scots recently spent a pleasant fortnight practising together at the Patrick Mouratoglou Academy in Nice, where Serena Williams still periodically is put through her paces.

“I had just under two weeks in Nice with Andy which was obviously really good, just really good training,” said McHugh. I was speaking to him and he is obviously a lot better than he was.

“He is definitely looking a lot better than when he played the exhibition in Glasgow so just hopefully over time it keeps getting better and better until he feels 100%,” he added. “I guess you just want to be careful, far better that than rushing back and getting hurt again.

“I spoke to Patrick [Mouratoglou] too when I was out there,” added the 17-year-old, also recently named as an ambassador for the Scottish government initiative, the Year of Young People. “And he told me he had watched me in Australia, I think I had maybe played one or maybe two of his guys on my run in the Aussie Open juniors so he had watched me a bit.

“He was really nice and looked after Andy and the rest of us really well, while Andy did a little clinic with him and a few of the younger kids at the academy. There was a possibility of Serena coming out just as we were leaving, but the weather wasn’t very good the last few days, so she didn’t. But I think she does use that as a base between tournaments.”

Downtime between tournaments right now is something that McHugh, pleasingly, doesn’t have a lot of. While he has been given a wild card into a main draw which also includes former Britain Davis Cup stars James Ward and Dan Evans, the latter of whom is returning from a drugs ban, and the likes of Spanish former top 20 player Marcel Granollers, he won’t appear in Glasgow until Monday at the earliest. Scotstoun is an arena he knows very well, even if some more temporary seating and such like has been added to cater for larger than usual crowds.

As it happens, McHugh is speaking from Tunisia, at a Futures tournament where he already has five victories to his name, and where he will play amid 30-degree temperatures in a semi-final today against the 339-ranked Yannick Mertens of Belgium. Whatever happens, he is already safe in the knowledge that his world ranking in the seniors is sure to drop beneath 1000 for the first time.

“After today I go up to the top 1000, literally just under it, something like 997, but it is another nice milestone for me,” he said. “And Glasgow is obviously a really good opportunity for me to see if I can play a good match or a couple of good matches against some higher ranked players. I am really looking forward to playing Glasgow, it is a great opportunity for me. I love playing in these bigger tournaments.

“But obviously my head is still kind of focused on this week,” says McHugh, who is coached by Leon Smith’s brother Toby. “I’m playing a guy called [Yannick] Mertens now who I played in Glasgow and lost to but I had a few wee chances and stuff in that match.I have got that game on the laptop so I will watch a bit of that, see what worked there and see what I can do.

“I have done two weeks out here and then it is straight from here to Glasgow.,” he added. “Then it will be back to the Futures after that again, so a lot of matches, but that is a good thing. Then there will be a week on the clay ahead of playing French Open juniors.”

Regardless of how things go in Tunisia, it seems unlikely that McHugh, a Celtic fan, and Smith, a Rangers fan, will be back in Glasgow in time for the small matter of a season-defining Glasgow derby at Celtic Park on Sunday. “We won’t be back in time to check out the Old Firm match, although we’ll probably get to a radio somewhere.”