How Wimbledon champion Andy Murray developed into a star at The Sánchez-Casal Academy Deep in the delta of the Llobregat River, up a little-marked side road on the fringes of Barcelona’s El Prat Airport, lies Andy Murray’s dream factory.

The Sánchez-Casal Academy has been augmented a touch from the autumn of 2002, when the Wimbledon champion pitched up here as a gangly, unpolished 15-year-old from Dunblane, but its fundamental purpose has never wavered. As Stefan Ortega, one of the Scot’s mentors in this immersive enclave of tennis talent, expresses it: “The ambitious young player needs a quiet background, to feel calm. And for the whole year we do nothing else but practise and compete outdoors. You can almost smell the health of this kind of sporting life.”

Andy Murray has decide to stay away from Leeds this weekend to concentrate on his comeback following back surgery in September.

It was clear for some time that his back was needing some attention and losing to Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland in the US Open at the beginning of September only served to emphasise the need for immediate action.