AIDAN McHugh went off into the night anticipating some electronic communication from his all-seeing mentor Andy Murray after letting a mini opportunity of a major scalp slip through his fingers at Scotstoun yesterday, writes Stewart Fisher. The 17-year-old, signed up to the former World No 1’s 77 Sports Management Group, demonstrated plenty of his repertoire to the early evening crowd at the Glasgow Trophy against an opponent in David Guez of France who was more than double his age and around 700 spots higher in the world rankings. Fighting back from a horror start which saw him lose the first three games, McHugh dug deep and was soon serving for the set at 6-5, only for a poor service game to come along at the wrong time. He was 3-1 up in the tie-breaker too but the veteran smarts of his 35-year-old opponent took it 7-5 then closed out the second set 6-3.
“I probably won’t contact him [Murray] but he might send me something,” said McHugh, of the connection with his mentor, with whom he practised for a fortnight at the Patrick Mouratoglou Academy in Nice recently. “If he watched and he saw something he will probably tell me something to see if I can kind of learn from it. I’m sure he will because literally every three matches I play, wherever I am, he will say well done or whatever. He is always keeping an eye, always watching. It is great for him to be so interested.”
McHugh reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open Juniors in January and clearly has time on his side. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t impatient for further success. “It’s good experience - he has played so many of these tournaments at this level,” he said. “It will come for me over time too but it is hard to be patient. I’ve never actually been to the French Open, it is the only slam I have never been to, even as a spectator. I am really excited to go and see if I can play well. I think I stopped French at national five level.”
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