BEING at St Andrews any week is as close to perfection as you could want, but this week it has seemed nearer than before. A lot of Scottish children have been coming up to me asking not how my golf game is shaping, but what I think of Andy Murray. To them, he is a new, bit more rebellious, St Andy.

It is an encouraging trend for tennis in Britain and more so when Murray has the kind of week he has had, reaching his first ATP Tour final and playing Roger Federer. It is exactly what our sport needs at a time when others, such as golf, in which there are so many excellent young British players, and cricket, after the summer results against Australia, are so popular. Murray is becoming a real focus, a wilder, unorthodox, very different focus than there was in Tim Henman.

It is difficult not to be impressed with all that Murray has achieved so rapidly this year and especially since Wimbledon. This week, for instance, he made the transition from indoor clay in the Davis Cup to a hard court several time zones away in Thailand, arriving fatigued. Federer has done the same, but we expect it from the best player in the world who is at the top of his game. Murray handled it all and was still able to test Federer.

He had long matches against Robby Ginepri and Paradorn Srichaphan and won both from a set down, he has been practising with and pitting his wits against the very best. We knew he had the talent and determination; what we have discovered is that he has the body — even though he is still growing — and the concentration to see these kind of matches through. He has shown he is someone to count on.

And this, with the whole country on his shoulders, a place where expectations after Wimbledon were sky high and yet he went to the United States and he delivered on what he hoped to do. A lot of players are talented, but they don’t apply that talent. You cannot say that about Murray. Since Wimbledon, what he and Mark Petchey set out to do, they have done. This is a massive compliment for both of them, that their goals keep changing and they keep achieving together. Murray is not the future. He is the now.

His character and that of Henman could not be more different. I’ve said it before and I think it’s worth repeating, Murray is not going to be your Mr Nice Guy, he is not going to say “yes, hooray” and give the media everything it wants from him because that is not part of his winning strategy. He is a young man who knows his own mind, he is finding his own way and the bottom line is, win or lose, to keep doing what he thinks is right.

My attitude was always: I don’t care about a bad press, as long as I win. I won grand-slam championships and they still find fault with me, so it didn’t really matter whether they were good or bad anyway.

The reasons for Murray to play tennis in the first place are also different from Tim. Henman came through a private scheme, into the LTA, he was with a group of players before heading off with a coach, the proper, British way. Andy comes across much more as an outsider, more of a rebel (they have had lots of those in Scotland, I hear), he believed in doing it in a certain manner, he said at Wimbledon that he wanted Petchey, who worked for the LTA, to be his coach, and he got what he wanted.

He has good surroundings now. It is important he keeps making the right moves and, being young and confident, he will not want to stop playing. Apart from a period at home over Christmas, he should play as much as he wants because it is not good to rest on your laurels too long. He is part of a generation that includes Rafael Nadal, Richard Gasquet and Gaël Monfils, who can challenge in the next five years and, for what he has achieved in the past seven months, I put Murray second to Nadal.

The shame for British tennis is that after him there is a such a long silence.