ANDY Murray was last night urged to ignore the chaos on the ATP Tour and bring top-level tennis to Scotland by running his own tournament. Whether it is a Masters 250 or 500 event based around Glasgow’s SSE Hydro and exhibition centre area or a world-class youth event which could perhaps be situated around the Park of Keir site which his mum Judy is involved in being developed in Dunblane, the Scot and his team have long considered taking the plunge on such an event and it is understood that it is an idea which hasn’t gone away.

An LTA and Tennis Scotland-backed Challenger event named the Murray Trophy in the family’s honour, which could feature both brothers, will take place at Scotstoun this September and Juan Carlos Ferrero, the former World No.1 and former co-owner of the Valencia 500 tournament, reckons there is no one better to bring the lessons he learned from Spain than the 32-year-old.

“I don’t know exactly what you need here – but I will tell you what we have in Spain,” explained Ferrero. “Good weather, good conditions, good academies, good coaches. And something more important than any of the things I just said is that we have a lot of tournaments like Futures, Challengers, a lot of opportunities for players to grow up in the sport when we are very young.

“We have a lot of local tournaments when we turn 15, 16, 17 so that when you hit the age of 18,19 we have the experience to play Futures. I ran a tournament, 500 in Valencia, and now in my academy we have Challengers and that kind of thing would be great for Scotland. What it is going to need is to have somebody who wants to make the tennis grow up and be better and better every day. Andy is maybe the best person out there who can do it.

“It is challenging of course because it was very different to what he is used to. Of course he needs the help of the federation, so kids don’t have to travel all the time to Europe to play tournaments. But it is good to start step by step, you can’t start with a Grand Slam if you have never had one. You need to start with challengers, futures, then you can try to build it up to 250, 500.”

As it happens, this is a particularly fraught moment to be considering such a move. The ATP is currently without an executive chairman after Chris Kermode was forced out back in March by a coup involving Novak Djokovic and others. Finding a replacement suitable for both the players and the tournament reps is proving difficult, while the 10-man player council was deadlocked when it came to finding a replacement for the disgraced player representative Justin Gimelstob, who is still thought to have the ear of the Serb. Andy’s brother Jamie, and pals Dani Vallverdu and Sergiy Stakhovsky were among those who resigned in disgust after a seven-hour meeting on Friday ended when an executive called Weller Evens, thought to be close to Gimelstob, was appointed in his stead on an interim basis.

“There are many things going on right now in the ATP as an organisation,” said Feliciano Lopez, the man who partnered Andy Murray to the Queen’s Club doubles title, and won the singles for good measure. The Spaniard, who co-owns the ATP Tour event in Madrid, effectively has a seat in both the players’ and tournament owners’ camps.

“There is probably many changes coming up,” he said. “I cannot tell you obviously in detail, but everything is falling apart. By the end of the year, we will hopefully, you know, have everything sorted out and we will have the player council again and everything's gonna be hopefully in the right direction again. But for the moment, it's kind of a mess. This is all I can tell you.”

Ferrero, in Scotland recently to participate in the Brodies Tennis Invitational at the Gleneagles Arena, was on the losing end on all three of his tour meetings with the Scot. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t delighted to see him speaking in such positive terms ahead of a likely singles return either before – or immediately after – the US Open.

“Of course, it would be great to see Andy back on the singles tour,” said Ferrero, who counted new Tennis Scotland academy lead coach Leo Azevedo as part of his coaching entourage. “I was sad when he said he was about to retire due to injury. I never want to see any of the players I met on the tour retire because of injury. And Andy was always one of the best – including the rest of the top four. I am very happy to see him trying to be back and seeing him playing doubles. I hope he just gets better and better, without any pain, and can keep playing with lots of joy.

“What can he achieve? I cannot say. If we say something, it is just imagining that it is going to happen. Of course, it is very difficult to come back from the injury he has had, but maybe not impossible. I hope he can come back well but if not try at least now he can live a normal life in a good way.”