HE MAY have missed out on more records and glory in the Paris Masters, but Andy Murray's legions of fans should not worry as they have plenty of success to look forward to, according to one of the coaches who knows him best.

Leon Smith is now one of the men driving the Lawn Tennis Association's coaching programme as head coach for under-16s men's tennis, but a decade ago he was the first person outside the family to coach Andy, and he is sure his former protégé will hit the very top next year, perhaps even at Wimbledon.

"Next year is going to be very exciting," said Smith. "Andy is going to have a great end to this year with the Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai for the first time, which will be a whole new experience for him which I am sure he will love. Then he will get down to hard work in the off season where he will become even stronger for the new year.

"He still has a lot of time on his side to get even more out of his game and to be number four in the world at the age of 21, well, I just foresee more and more coming from him.

"I see him at the National Tennis Centre (NTC) a lot, and when you know how hard he is working, the only way for him is up.

"Wimbledon? He showed this year that he is comfortable on grass, but I think his game suits most surfaces, as he is very adaptable.

"His service is already a huge weapon but I think he is going to add even more miles per hour to his speed. The key thing is that he is starting to use the service really smartly now, he is mixing it up and not just using the big power serve. He is moving it around and keeping the returner guessing.

"The big serve will be a real weapon for him on grass, and he has also improved his net play in the last 12 to 16 months and looks really confident moving forward. Couple that with the fact that he is just about the best returner around and he has a real chance in the tournament."

Smith took on Murray as a pupil when he was a young club coach still playing competitive tennis at the age of 21, and the future superstar was but a stripling in Dunblane.

"I was his first coach for about six years, of course after his most important coach, his mum Judy," said Smith. "I knew Judy from when I was playing in the Scottish junior tournaments and she was national coach and very much involved in coaching. I got to know her pretty well and when Andy was around 11 or so, she asked me to do some work with him.

"We hit it off right from the start. I had been working as a coach for about four years at that time, having left school and begun a bit of club coaching, so it was nice to get someone who was clearly very talented and competitive. He already knew then that he wanted to be a tennis player and was very committed to playing tennis, though he was still playing football very well at that time.

"We spent a lot of time together and I would see him almost every day. As he got older and began to move forwards, our relationship grew because we began to travel internationally. Back then we didn't have much funding and had to share rooms as we travelled, so we had no choice but to get on. We still see each other at the NTC and text each other all the time."

Smith's first trip overseas with the budding young star was to the Orange Bowl in Florida, recognised as the world championship for the younger age grades. Murray won the under-12 group, and a glittering career beckoned. Except that Murray had a hidden congenital defect, one which almost cost him his career before it had properly started.

The boy from Dunblane had been born with a bipartite patella, or a split kneecap as it's usually known. It still causes Murray some pain now and again, but the drastic cure he undertook as a teenager – he was forced to stop playing for many months – worked enough to let him start playing again.

"I was around when he had the injury and it was pretty tough times for him," said Smith. "He was desperate to play and had such a good junior career at that point that doors were opening to him. But he couldn't play and it was very, very difficult for him.

"It shows the strength of his character, however, that he used the time away from the court to get in the gym and start bulking up his top half. He did a lot of weights and stuck to his rehab programme very well."

The rest, as they say, is history, but Smith feels Murray can become truly historic by achieving his goal to be world No.1.

"I keep telling everyone how hard he is working," said Smith, "whether it's on the court or in the gym. In everything he does he pays such great attention to detail, and he has such a great team around him now and he is clearly responding to it.

"The most important thing, however, is that it is Andy himself who is driving it, and working towards his goal of becoming the best tennis player in the world. He is clearly one of the best right now as his ranking shows, and physically he is as good if not better than nearly everyone else around him. I think he said himself that he feels that he can play less than his best tennis yet still get through tournaments against very good opponents – that is a pretty major thing to be able to do at that level."

Smith's own role in developing future Andy Murrays has excited him and he points to the likes of George Morgan from Bolton and Aberdeen's Joanna Henderson as potential stars.

Smith said: "We have got a really good system and structure in place in which the LTA's funding is going out to high-performance centres across the country which are responsible for developing young players from the time they start playing all the way through."

It's a system that was not in place when Andy Murray first took up the game. Fortunately, thanks to mother Judy and Leon Smith, he gained exactly the tutelage he needed as a youngster which has helped make him the player he is today.

And, as Smith says, the sky's the limit for Scotland's greatest-ever tennis player.