Andy Murray is ready to part company with Brad Gilbert after falling out with the high-profile American coach who helped to build the 20-year-old Scot into one of the finest tennis players in the world.

When Gilbert was appointed in the summer of 2006, Murray was ranked No 36 in the world, had introduced himself as one of the brightest young talents and was on the threshold of turning potential into prizes. He believed that the finishing touch was to bring in the man who had driven Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick to the summit of the game and who was acknowledged as one of the sharpest of tennis brains.

Murray completes this year as world No 11, but the pair have not been the happiest of co-travellers for a while. There were strong rumours that they would separate before the US Open at the end of August, when the Scot was trying to piece his year together after the wrist injury that caused him to miss three months and two grand-slam tournaments.

Theirs has been a tempestuous relationship and, at the end of a period in which Murray was within one victory in Paris this month of qualifying for the Masters Cup in Shanghai, it is believed that they prefer to go their separate ways.

Gilbert, 46, normally a verbose individual, was reluctant to discuss his situation last night. “I don’t really want to talk about it,” he said from California. “I haven’t spoken to the LTA [Lawn Tennis Association].” Murray is believed to be on holiday in the United States, but not on the West Coast.

Murray has never been shy of making decisions that he feels will best benefit his career. On his emergence as a teenager with more natural talent than Great Britain had produced for years, he asked Mark Petchey, the former Davis Cup player, to become his coach, but the pair parted company in April last year when Murray heightened his aims.

This decision does, however, leave the LTA in a deep dilemma. The national governing body had appointed Gilbert and was happy to indulge him his wages of about £750,000 a year to make sure that Murray was content. In the weeks he was not overseeing the Scot’s career, Gilbert would help the coaching staff at the National Tennis Centre.

The contract was regarded as one of the most remarkable agreed in world tennis - that an association with a remit to build and sustain the sport would pay the wages of a coach who was ostensibly working with one player. Gilbert readily accepted the deal; the rest of the sport looked on in wonder. He brought in Mark Grabow, a fitness coach with the Golden State Warriors basketball team, to build up Murray’s strength.

Together they have worked at only three grand-slam tournaments, the US Opens of 2006 and 2007 and the Australian Open in January, when Murray extended Rafael Nadal, the Spanish world No 2, to five sets in a wondrous fourth-round encounter, after which Gilbert was reduced to tears, so remarkable was his charge’s effort. They would have spent more grand-slam tournaments together but for the wrist injury suffered in Hamburg in May, which forced Murray to miss the French Open and Wimbledon this year.

There is no doubt that, for as long as they have worked together, the partnership has been beneficial. Murray’s ranking soared, Gilbert was one of the best scouting coaches of his ilk and his reputation will not have suffered one jot from the prospective parting of the ways.