THE shock of new is unmistakeable as we approach the final Grand Slam of the tennis year. Not only will the US Open be streamed exclusively on Amazon Prime for the first time, Flushing Meadow’s secondary arena, Louis Armstrong, has been upholstered with a retractable fabric roof, with players in Grand Slam main draw play for the first time subject to a basketball-style 25-second shot clock for the first time.

The variation from the norm doesn’t end there, though. If it is hardly new that the three men who bring 50 Grand Slam titles to the party – No 1 seed Rafa Nadal, No 2 seed Roger Federer and No 6 seed Novak Djokovic - are widely considered favourites for the title, for the first time since last year’s Wimbledon, five major championships ago, Andy Murray is set to feature in Grand Slam action. While the Scot has thought better at the 11th hour of subjecting his body to the rigours of best-of-five play at least three times before as he painstakingly works his way back from a hip operation, if body and mind are willing the World No 378 will return to a Grand Slam match court for the first time for 14 months at the start of next week, an event which he enters on the strength of his protected ranking. He could land any of the usual suspects as early as the first round.

Having proved he can be competitive, given half a chance by the schedulers, in best-of-three matches on the hard courts of Washington and Cincinnati, the next step for the Scot – who practised yesterday with Spain’s Feliciano Lopez is convincing himself that he can do likewise in the longer form of the sport. As much as the competitive fire will always burn away, his former coach Brad Gilbert – now a pundit on espn.co.uk -feels success for the Scot would be managing to navigate his way through the early stages of the tournament. As far as his route back to the top of the sport goes, that is a long-term process which could take 12 months or more.

“He needs a full year of being healthy, playing a lot, to see what he can do,” said Gilbert. “That is first and foremost. He is obviously at the mercy of the draw, he could play Rafa, he could play Federer, Novak, just because of how low ranked he is. That makes it difficult to project.

“He isn’t – all of a sudden – going to become the kind of guy that is going to start thinking ‘okay, maybe I can just win a couple of games’,” the American added. “He’ll be hoping he gets a decent draw, he eases into the tournament by getting through the first week … and then goes from there.

“He clearly didn’t want to play two matches in a day, finishing at 3am in the morning [in Washington], that was a tough week for him. But you don’t know where you are until you win 7-5 in the fifth then have to put yourself in a position to play another match a day later. These questions will be easier to answer three months down the line.”

For all the epic recoveries staged by the three main contenders, Gilbert points to Gustavo Kuerten and Magnus Norman as players who didn’t make it back from hip surgery. Medical science has come on a lot since then, though, and Gilbert feels the recent recoveries after lengthy periods out by the likes of Juan Martin del Potro and Stan Wawrinka should offer grist to the Scot’s mill.

“I saw Stan a couple of months ago, and he didn’t look very good, back when he played Murray at Eastbourne,” said Gilbert. “Then all of a sudden you come to Cincinnati and he is a completely different player. So I do think Andy’s ability, once he is healthy enough to play week in week out, that the results are going to come.

“His game is a bit different than say Fed, Djokovic or Rafa coming back from injury. He uses his legs more. So when he was out, he probably wasn’t able to put in the hard yards. He wouldn’t have been able to do much in the way of cardio in the way that Djokovic would with his arm surgery.

“Even though Federer had that knee injury he is way more offensive minded in his tennis than Murray, he can take time away from his opponents,” he added. “But I do think Andy can take some stock in terms of how long Delpo was out a couple of different times and still managed to come back. In 12 months from now, if Andy was totally healthy with no more injuries, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was back in the top five.”

Of the young contenders on the men’s side, Alexander Zverev is the talk of the town having hooked up recently with Murray’s former coach Ivan Lendl. “He took steps in the right direction, which he should have done sooner, by taking on Ivan Lendl,” said Gilbert. “But if [Marin] Cilic or Delpo don’t win there won’t be anyone left under 30 who has a major title to their name. Blame the big three, they have wiped out a generation.”