Mats Wilander had won two grand slam titles by the time he was Andy Murray’s age, so you can’t blame him for being a little circumspect amid all the hype surrounding the Scots teenager right now.

By anyone’s standards, Murray has had a stunning summer. He has beaten Roger Federer, he was runner-up at the ATP Tour event in Washington, made the semi-finals of a Masters Series event in Canada and moved through to the last 16 of the US Open, and seen his ranking rise to well inside the top 20. Wilander is impressed by the 19-year-old’s progress, but as a former teenage prodigy himself he is well placed to point out an area still ripe for improvement.

Wilander believes Murray needs to be less of a perfectionist, something Murray’s coach Brad Gilbert agrees on. Wanting your talent to shine is certainly not the worst crime a young player can commit, but Wilander won seven grand slam titles with, he says, more perspiration than inspiration, and he is convinced Murray will need to be more accepting of his own failings if he is to progress up the rankings.

“I guess the difference between somebody like me and Andy Murray is that nothing ever got me down,” says Wilander. “I never shook my head, or at least never showed the other guy that I was feeling shit. And I think with Andy, that’s something he’s got to learn. You can clearly tell when he’s upset. You can get upset but you can’t let your head down and I think that’s what he’s doing a little bit. But he’s 19 and he’s going to learn.

“I don’t think it’s just Andy, I think a lot of youngsters, they want to feel good when they play, they want to feel confid ent and good about the game,” says Wilander. “And it’s really not about feeling good about your game, it’s about winning. That’s maybe his weakness so far but he’s 19 years old, that’s very young. I think that maybe it’s going to be up to him to play tennis and not worry about feeling good about it. It’s a matter of winning and it seemed that in his last match against Nikolay Davydenko that he played a very smart set and then he didn’t keep it up somehow.”

Wilander points to Rafael Nadal and Federer as examples of players who frequently find a way to win when they aren’t playing well. Federer, in particular, says now that perfectionism sometimes held him back when he started on the men’s tour.

He knew he had an extra ordinary talent and pride would not allow him to accept anything less than a flawless performance. Only when he cut himself some slack and stopped becoming frustrated by errors was he able to find a way to win consistently. He acquired mental toughness.

“The difference between Nadal and Federer and Murray and these guys is that: it’s mental. It’s always going to be mental,” says Wilander. “Mental toughness means that I’m not losing. I’m going to explore every avenue there is to win the match. Look at Nadal. Nadal is the perfect example. It doesn’t matter how well he plays or what the other guy does, he’s not going to lay down. Look at those two guys and you know what you have to get to.”

There is no doubt Murray has already made phenomenal progress since he won his first ATP Tour match at Queen’s Club in June last year. He is training with Gilbert in California but returns to Europe next week to travel to Odessa with Great Britain’s Davis Cup team for their play-off against the Ukraine in less than two weeks.

After that he heads to events in Bangkok and Tokyo before another trip back to the European indoor swing, which includes Masters Series events in Madrid, an ATP Tour tournament in Basel and another Masters Series event in Paris. If he comes close to replicating his success this summer there is every chance he will end the year inside the world’s top 10.

Wilander believes he is cap able of doing it. “I think he’s come very far. It’s amazing what he’s done this summer, for sure. I think you could kind of tell last year at Wimbledon that he had something special but it’s a big difference from winning two rounds at Wimbledon and doing what he did this summer,” says the Swede.

“Clearly the other guys know he can play. I don’t think Brad Gilbert would have been there if he didn’t see that Andy Murray has the game. Does he have the game to compete with Nadal and Federer? I have no idea. But he’s top 10 material for sure.”