At 22, the imposing clay court king already owns four Grand Slam titles (all at Roland Garros) and has been in two Wimbledon finals. Today's was Murray's first Grand Slam quarter-final.
So let's get it right. We know that Murray has an enviable gift and that the Gasquet triumph illustrated he has both the steel and inspiration to offer up a major threat to any player in the game but if he was to beat Nadal, now protected by a rare and intimidating aura, it would represent a leap into an entirely new league for the Scot.
Not that it was mission impossible; just mission highly improbable. Murray's home advantage? Well, previously, Nadal has taken on four Frenchman at Roland Garros and quite shushed the excitable Parisians by hammering their favourites into the ground.
The fact that Murray took Nadal to five sets in last year's Australian Open? True, but he's been beaten in their two meetings since, so goes into the game having lost their last six sets - clearly a worrying fact.
Yet Murray is convinced that superb five-setter in Melbourne is relevant because "I learned that I could obviously play with him at his level. For probably four-and-a-half sets, I was up there with him and definitely had my chances". Again true but in that last half a set, Nadal finished him with utter relentlessness.
Murray's upper-arm striptease the other night wasn't going to win him any prizes against Nadal in the battle of the biceps but if it was the Scot's statement that he's not a four-and-a-half set player any more but a fit, battle-hardened five-set performer, then let him prove it again.
For still the question remains whether his conditioning can see him through what's bound to be an even more brutal test of his physicality.
"The guy's ridiculously strong," noted Murray after his Melbourne defeat. "You look at his body, you look at me and obviously I'm not as physically strong as him. But, you know, about a year, 1 8 months, there won't be the same physical difference. I'm going to work as hard as I can to get that level."
He has done but even if the gap has closed ever so slightly - and that's been arguable - Nadal's consistent intensity hasn't lasted for just three sets but for nigh on five years.
Watching the Spaniard on the practice courts yesterday was chilling as he dipped those massively top spun, crushing forehands time and again to within a few inches of the baseline; it made you think that any opponent trying to stop him in a game must feel like they're being asked to disable a threshing machine from a distance of 80 feet away.
A malfunctioning machine wouldn't go amiss and Murray wouldn't be human if he wasn't holding out hope today that the jarred knee which temporarily held up Nadal's march against Mikhail Youzhny in the last round could yet prove a handicap.
Greg Rusedski, for one, was left convinced that the Spaniard's movement was restricted slightly afterwards.
Murray needs every bit of help he can today; a slightly lame opponent, a f evered Centre Court crowd, you name it, because that quirky Spanish kid he once admired at courtside has already grown into a monstrous legend in the making.
Our boy's done all right himself but how exactly do you catch up with a comet against Nadal?
