The choice of management company to handle the Scot through a momentous period is likely to be confirmed before he starts his first full year on the ATP Tour in Australia next month. As one of the genuine likely lads of world tennis, Murray is in an exceedingly powerful position and those vying for the opportunity to represent him are intoxicated by such promise.

Octagon, with whom he signed as a promising junior, is in the box seat to retain him, but the company is increasingly nervous that Murray is being wooed by rival firms. It is understood that representatives from International Management Group (IMG), founded by Mark McCormack and regarded as the most prestigious of management companies, has had a meeting with the Murray family.

As the world No 64 has quickly discovered, every move he makes and every word he utters can have profound consequences. In September 2004, his appearance in the US Open boys’ final could not even woo every British writer in New York to watch him play; now busloads follow him to exhibition events that have little or no meaning.

Yesterday, on the third floor of an NCP car park in London’s Soho, he launched Raw Tennis, seeking to energise Britain’s teenagers to take up a sport many will have regarded with disdain until he came along. With his shock of hair, slight disregard for formality and full-frontal approach, he offers a radical difference from what tennis has been used to this country. His Octagon shadow was never more than five yards from him at all times. And why wouldn’t she be?

It is the difference in Murray, his marketability, his personality and his enormous potential to which companies are desperate to be attached. The competition is compelling, not least in that Octagon, which represented Steffi Graf, Michael Chang and Lleyton Hewitt, grand-slam title-winners all, are regarded as the little brother to IMG and SFX, the former having Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal and the latter having Andy Roddick on their client lists.

Tim Henman has been on IMG’s books since he broke on to the professional scene in the mid-Nineties and is represented by Jan Felgate, wife of David, the LTA’s director of performance. Bill Ryan, once of IMG and Henman’s former mentor, has recently joined forces with Patricio Apey at Acegroup, and between them they offer a massive amount of experience and international goodwill.

Ion Tiriac, the Romanian who guided Boris Becker to enormous wealth, still has a foot in the management business, representing Goran Ivanisevic and Marat Safin, although he is a huge influence, also, in tennis politics as the owner of the Madrid Masters Series event. Tiriac would delight in helping Murray, although the previous time he offered his services to British tennis — he said 15 years ago that if he was given £250,000 and free rein, he would unearth at least one grand-slam champion — the LTA turned him down.

Such defensive attitudes are no good to Murray, who has his differences with the LTA, as confirmed in his condemnation of the experience of his brother. “I’m always going to speak my mind,” he said yesterday, having insisted this week that the coaches in Cambridge “ruined” Jamie, his elder brother, when he was based at one of the LTA’s regional training centres. “Things have changed for the better now, but I stand by what I said.”

The Scot did not mind stoking new levels of interest in the sport on a chill November afternoon — perfect weather for the introduction of Raw Tennis, the tennis equivalent of kicking a football around in your backyard. Wimbledon it is not.

“People look at tennis, see the all-white clothing stuff and it doesn’t really look that much fun,” he said. “I think things like this are great to get kids started playing. The main thing I want to change in Britain is the attitude to the sport.”

He is the one person who can do it. Which is why the clamour for him grows by the day.