Iain Morrison: Murray loses a mint

ANDY MURRAY may already be hurting after losing his semi-final against Andy Roddick and he won't gain much peace of mind when he realises the full extent of what he has let slip. According to one of the shrewdest brains in the business, Friday's hiccup on centre-court could have cost the Scot the chance of raking in approximately £100 million over the next few years in sponsorship money alone.

"It's a very simple guess," said the PR guru Max Clifford when asked about the impact a Wimbledon victory would have had on Murray's finances, "but he could earn about £100m over the next five or six years providing he stays at the top of tennis. Wimbledon is the number one tournament in the world, with all the history, tradition and everything that goes with it. If he wins then he joins the elite, which puts him right at the top of the mountain and guarantees him that kind of income.

"Tennis is an international game and a highly lucrative one. It's one of the most lucrative sports in the world, right up there with football and motor racing at the very top in terms of money, which is why I am saying that the kind of money that Andy Murray could have earned could have made him the highest-earning sports star in Britain because aged just 22 he has the potential to stay at the top for the next five or six years."

While there is little doubt about Murray's ability to stay at the top of the game he loves, there have long been question marks over the marketability of the man who, as Clifford points out, has on occasion been dubbed the "surly Scot".

"The average person in the street will tell you that he's full of himself or obnoxious or he's this or he's that because he comes across as someone who surly, someone who's thinking 'I don't give a toss', that kind of thing but he seems to have matured in the last year."

This process was fast-forwarded by former Sun editor Stuart Higgins who was hired by "Team Murray" last year to improve the player's image and the transformation has been more dramatic than anything you will witness on prime time TV. Never mind Make Me Ten Years Younger, this was more a case of "Make Me Ten Times More Popular".

Out went the Saltire wristband, the long locks, the baseball cap and the facial hair. In their place Murray is now scrubbed to within an inch of his life, sporting a short back and sides and, most importantly, those iconic Fred Perry whites with the buttons done all the way up like the mod he certainly isn't. It's a neat metaphor for what has happened to Murray overall, a little buttoning up.

Higgins also dismantled some of the defensive barriers that Murray's previous handlers had erected which made the player feel like he was forever fighting the press. It made a world of difference because the Scot's dust dry sense of humour has since been allowed space to breathe. When asked last week about fan mail he admitted that he doesn't open many of the hundreds of letter he receives every day, although he conceded that he made an exception for one from the Queen: "Well you would, wouldn't you?"

Is there a danger that too many of Murray's rough edges have been smoothed over, that the Scot is in danger of becoming just another anonymous tennis clone?

"No is the answer to that," says Clifford. "In the last year or so he seems to have grown up a lot. He's probably a lot more popular now than he was a year ago because of that. I don't think you are going to take any of the character out of Andy Murray and by doing that spoil his chances on the tennis court. He's a very, very competitive person and obviously extremely motivated. Andy Murray will have learned by watching people like Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, great players, but they have a much more natural mastery of image than he has. From the perspective of earnings potential, and he's a canny Scot so earnings potential will always be hugely important, the more popular you are the more money you are going to make from your career over and above tennis."

Murray may have stumbled on the court, but he doesn't lack ambition off it. Earlier this year he parted company with both Higgins and his former agent, Patricio Apey of ACE Group. Instead he signed with Simon Fuller's 19 Entertainment. This is the global PR company that looks after "Brand Beckham", manages another Scottish star in Annie Lennox and has an alliance with Creative Artists, who handle Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt – from Holyrood to Hollywood in one easy step, although the deal has not received universal praise.

The giant IMG agency was left as a frustrated suitor when Murray singed with Fuller's group because it has infinitely more experience in the world of sport's marketing than 19 does. Former Wimbledon winner Pat Cash for one was amazed at the media scrum allowed to crowd the Scot as he practised ahead of his semi-final clash and you have to wonder if it affected the outcome. Unsurprisingly Clifford is also less than enthusiastic about one of his rivals in the agency business.

"Simon Fuller got involved with David Beckham when he was (already] a worldwide superstar. Then he said he was going to launch Victoria Beckham in America. Nothing happened except a lot of hype. So I don't put too much faith in Simon Fuller, I do have a lot of potential faith in Andy Murray."

As things stand, the Scots' off-court earnings come from sponsors such as RBS, Highland Spring, Head rackets and, of course, Fred Perry clothing. Murray's sponsorship is said to be worth anything from £5m per annum to three times that figure but he obviously needs to be winning grand slam events to take that final step up the earnings ladder. Presuming that he does the business on the court, what advice would Clifford offer the Scot off it?

"If I was involved I'd probably advise him to have his teeth done because he seems to have particularly unattractive teeth. Why bother? Well, if you're seriously interested in making yourself the biggest sports star on the planet then it matters. If you're not, it doesn't."

He may indeed get his teeth seen to, but the young Scot has more pressing matters fixing his tennis game in time for Flushing Meadows because without those grand slam titles no-one can sell Andy Murray to the sort of high-profile backers that could perhaps make a global icon out of the man from Dunblane.