IT is factually incorrect to state that Andy Murray is dreaming of US Open victory over the next fortnight.

The 25-year-old Scot has been confronted by many strange nocturnal apparitions in recent weeks, none of which expressly relates to the event which begins today at Flushing Meadows.

The first arrived in the days following his defeat in the Wimbledon final by Roger Federer, when he dreamed that he had been the victor, only to have such notions disabused when he came to. The counterpoint arrived shortly after his three-set dismantling of the same man in the Olympic tennis event at the All England Club, when he woke up in a cold sweat having convinced himself that he had in fact lost.

Short of venturing into the realms of amateur psychology, the point would seem to be that your mind can play tricks on you from time to time.

If the Scot can channel the positive elements of his summer, and forget about the negatives, he appears well placed to become the first male British winner of a grand slam event since Fred Perry in 1936.

"Something like four days after Wimbledon I dreamt I won Wimbledon," the Scot said. "I woke up in the morning and I was just starting to feel better. Then a few days after the Olympics, I dreamt that I lost in the final of the Olympics. Obviously waking up remembering that I had won was nice. So you think about it a lot."

"The thing with tennis especially is that we have tournaments and things to look forward to in the not-too-distant future," he added. "Once you start getting on the match court again, you never forget about it, but that feeling is a bit different. That takes your mind off what happened a few weeks ago. I haven't had any dreams about winning the US Open yet, but I'll keep you posted."

While many Olympic medallists hung around to do the chat show circuit, Murray clearly had bigger things in mind. He has only played three matches on the hard court events of Toronto and Cincinnati but he is happy with his preparation, says he is clear of the knee injury which had been plaguing him, and feels confident and upbeat after what he regards as the biggest win of his life. The Scot, who yesterday practised with David Nalbandian, may well have to again face Federer in the US Open semi-final then follow it up against Novak Djokovic to take the trophy, but he said his draw "feels the same as any other slam to me".

First, however, he must meet the challenge presented by Alex Bogomolov Jr in the searing midday heat in Arthur Ashe Stadium today. The pair have met three times, Murray winning twice, and if this is to be the year when the Scot finally gets on the winner's rostrum in a major, the 29-year-old is an appropriate opponent as any against whom to begin his campaign.

Bogomolov Jr's 6-1, 7-5 victory over Murray in Miami in March may have been a genuine turning point in the Scot's career, a desperate nadir from which he could build under the tutelage of Ivan Lendl, whose coaching role had been announced in the preceding January.

Lendl brings huge knowhow about how to manage this event, having played in the final eight times, winning thrice. There has been a quiet kind of alchemy about the way he has overseen a partial paring back of Murray's schedule of commitments, not to mention minor tinkering with aspects of the Scot's game such as his second serve and forehand.

"Murray has been through a number of coaches, a number of world-class coaches," said John McEnroe. "But this seems to have come at a pretty critical point in his career, where perhaps Ivan had the credibility of someone who had been in a similar situation as Andy, having not won his first four grand slams, losing in the finals, and then going on to become one of the great players of all time. It [coaching] can be wildly unpredictable. It can be very, very subtle changes that take years."

Murray and Bogomolov Jr, who goes by the nickname Bogie, both reside in Florida for much of the year but that is where the similarity ends. Bogomolov goes into the tournament ranked No.73 in the world, having been as high as No.33, and his career has not been without its hardships and intrigues. His father, Alex Sr, moved to Miami in the early 1990s, with the consequence that his son played under the USA flag until the end of 2011, when he reverted to Russian nationality.

The player suffered a high-profile divorce from US tennis professional-turned-Playboy model Ashley Harkleroad, and has a young son called Maddox from his current relationship. In 2005 he was suspended from the sport for one month, for taking the banned substance salbutamol, ostensibly as a treatment for asthma, and had to rebuild his career after serious wrist surgery in 2008, supplementing his income with coaching work at a tennis school in Gotham, New York.