What’s going on in Serbia? Tennis betting fans will have noticed that it’s almost impossible to watch a tennis match in the French Open where both of the players come from a country other than Serbia. Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic, both in the semi-finals, are numbers two and three on the women’s world rankings while Novak Djokivic, also a semi-finalist, is breathing heavily down the necks of Federer and Nadal from the number three slot of the men’s. They have two men in the doubles semi final and the question must be asked ‘how can this small, land-locked country boast an incredible twelve places in the forty semi-final slots of the last five grand-slams?’

It’s not easy to find the answer. Let’s look at some statistics. Serbia has 94 tennis clubs compared with England’s 2,600. In Serbia there are 1600 players, aged 8 to 30, in national tournaments while in England we have 10,337 and the annual budget of the Serbian Tennis Federation (STF) is £330,000 while in England we spend £47.2m. The Serbian Tennis Federation owns no tennis courts.

Baffled by this, and struggling for an explanation, my thoughts turned to a comparison with young black males living in the ghettos of American cities. Sports betting enthusiasts recognise that one of the few tried and tested escape routes is boxing and young men, eager to make something of their lives, literally fight to escape their deprivation. Slobadan Zivojinovic, former Wimbledon semi-finalist and head of the STF, believes the British mentality is tough but ‘if you have a lot of things, you are not hungry’. In other words, there is nothing to struggle against when it’s all dished up on a plate. Jankovic, Ivanovic and Djokovic all trained on courts where they couldn’t play across court because of the walls, and on the other side you had to take care you didn’t run onto the next court.

Tennis is now rivalling football as the national sport of Serbia and Zivojinovic wants the top ten tennis players in the world to be Serbian. He cajoles more and more money out of his government each year and is building a sound basis for this dream to come true. Perhaps there’s something to be learned by our own tennis authorities from this small nation – ditch the Pimms and get into the back end of our inner cities.