“IF you don’t lose, you don’t learn.” The wisdom comes from Connor Thomson, an 18-year-old Scottish tennis player who is determined to make the most of the harsh lessons on offer at the ITF World Tennis Tour. This one has been dispensed - 6-0, 6-3 - by a 24-year-old from the USA called Alexander Ritschard in qualifying for the Scottish Championships at Scotstoun in Glasgow, an annual tournament which carries a $25,000 prize purse for both men and women.

The son of Malky, the former footballer, assistant manager and current Rangers youth coach, Connor is playing out his last season as a junior. Having won a round in both singles and doubles at the Australian Open boys’ competition in January, he will get a second go at Junior Wimbledon in the summer and then it is off to a tennis scholarship in the US at the University of South Carolina.

The lessons seem tougher than ever at this level right now due to a mid-winter rejig of the rankings which saw around half of the players in the system essentially fall off the ATP grid because none of their points had come in either ATP or Challenger-level events. One such player is Aidan McHugh, whose only two senior tournament wins came at Futures level. While one knock-on of the changes is a filtering down of Challenger-level players to this kind of event, McHugh will hope to take another scalp this afternoon against Danylo Kalenichenko of the Ukraine as a wild card into the main draw. “I’m actually quite lucky because I have a high transition tour ranking so I can get into a lot of the tournaments just on that,” said McHugh. “The rankings change is not going to help me, but it is not terrible either. Some of the guys at the Challenger Level have had to drop down so ‘futures’ events like this are a bit stronger. But you are going to have to play them anyway, so it is not like it is a disaster.”

The 18-year-old is signed to Andy Murray’s 77 Sports Management Agency and when he completed a week’s training with the Scot out in Miami in December, everything seemed rosy. Three months later Murray is resting up after a second hip operation - one which will alleviate pain he feels in the joint and either prolong his career or end it for good.

“I went out early with Andy and started in Miami at Crandon Park, I was there with him for four or five days then I went to IMG for the British camp,” said McHugh. “Andy was working away as normal back then, he was looking good, moving really well, a high level in the practices and I really enjoyed it. But I think he was just in too much pain. I don’t know how long it takes to recover, before he can start training again. But hopefully he does – it would be great.”