CUP final day dawns across Europe.

While Falkirk tangle with Inverness Caledonian Thistle at Hampden and Andy Murray's English team Arsenal face Aston Villa, in the French capital it is Paris Saint Germain taking on Auxerre in the Coupe de France.

As it turns out, Roland Garros will also bear witness to the kind of heavyweight struggle which would do justice to one of these showpiece occasions. It may only be the French Open third round, but the World No 3 from Scotland against the exciting Australian Nick Kyrgios is the kind of swashbuckling encounter for which the Coupe des Mousquetaires itself could be handed out.

If not a cup final, then certainly a North London derby. If Andy is Arsenal, the established force who are always there or thereabouts but crave a return to some serious silverware, Kyrgios, a Spurs fan, must be Tottenham, impossibly full of promise and dazzle but still struggling to convince the world they are a serious contender for the major prizes.

Let's hope that status quo continues for a while yet but Kyrgios certainly looks awfully like the future of tennis. While most people sit up and took notice with that storming win against Rafael Nadal at last year's Wimbledon, Murray's antennae were up way back in 2013 when he beat Radek Stepanek as a wild card here. There is a contradiction to the Scot's role with the sport's young guns - while he likes to nurture them and practice with them he knows his chances of success for now depend on keeping them at bay - but there is no disguising Murray's admiration for the star power this 20-year-old from Canberra, nicknamed 'Wild Thing', will bring to the sport over the next decade or so.

"He is going to be great player," said Murray. "But you never know exactly how great someone will be. Of the young guys he has had maybe the biggest results at the biggest events. So that is a great start.

"Wimbledon last year was a great run for him," he added. "That is a huge step, it shows he loves being in those positions. How good can he be? I have no idea. But he is already pretty good. It is just about maintaining that throughout the year in all competitions to build confidence and belief.

"Young people just now will love him because he's different," said the Scot. "He has earrings, he plays in loud clothes, he's got a haircut which isn't one that I would have but it's a fashionable, stylish kind of haircut. He's a cool guy. He's different. Whether over time he grows out of that and becomes different, I've no idea, but he does get people excited and I'm sure young people enjoy would watching him. He'll get people into the sport, for sure, and that's a good thing."

This will be the Scot's third attempt to keep this young pretender at arm's length, having succeeded back in Toronto in 2014, then earlier this year at a packed and partisan Rod Laver Arena in Australia. If the eventual 6-3, 7-6 (5), 6-3 scoreline fails to adequately tell the story of a match which saw Kyrgios smash three rackets, and earn a code violation for audible obscenity, Murray knows putting his opponent on the back foot early on will be similarly essential here.

"I expected it obviously when I went on the court, how the crowd would be," recalled the World No 3. "I expected them to be making a lot of noise and they were. When you prepare yourself for that mentally, it isn't a shock when it does happen. Where if you don't, it can wind you up a bit. So it is important to prepare yourself for what each match is going to bring and what the opponent brings. And obviously I know that when you play Nick, he is going to bring a lot of energy and aggression. He is going to be quite loud on the court and you have to be ready for that."

Rain is forecast in Paris for the start of next week, but perhaps untypically for a Scot, Murray would rather the weather went the other way. He feels that hot conditions suit him better than the cool ones which were the case during his second round win against Joao Sousa of Portugal. Nonetheless, that victory was his 12th straight on this surface, and there were words of support yesterday from Svetlana Kuznetsova, the Russian Grand Slam winner who was an occasional hitting partner of the teenager Murray's at Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona.

"It's amazing how he has developed his game, how he can change the pace and how smart he can play," said Kuznetsova. "I remember Andy, he always was with Dani Vallverdu, the guy who used to coach him. Everybody says you go to Spain and you play clay but at Sanchez-Casal there were 17 hard courts, and 10 clay. I remember he played a couple years ago here, I watched him play Rafa, and he totally had no chance. So he has learned how to play on clay and got much better physically, but it happened a couple years ago, not back when he was at Sanchez-Casal."

Kyrgios already has some spectacular five-set wins on his cv, but with a few aches and pains, whether he could record another against Murray on the physically demanding red dirt is another matter. The Scot would dearly love to have things wrapped up in time to watch Arsenal hopefully fulfil their quest for silverware, hopefully building the platform for a title challenge next season.

"I hope so," he said. "But you never know. The thing is, all the other teams will get better, so Arsenal obviously have to get better as well. That will probably mean making a few signings, but it sounds like they're going to go for some big players, so it's going to be a fun summer, that's for sure."