Draper can and does convene any number of expert panels aimed at unearthing the next Fred Perry, of restoring tennis to the high table of British sport. And every new initiative ends up in the same sporting landfill.

We are a tennis nation for two weeks a year. For the remainder the game retreats behind the closed doors of that elite institution the tennis club, which depends on subscriptions to thrive. Youngsters form no part of that equation. Britain has no chance of developing a productive tennis culture unless the game is played by children at an early age.

Britain is paying the price of generations of neglect. What we saw in Lithuania can be directly traced to the widespread erasure of public courts across the country. The game became an elite thrash at David Lloyd Tennis Centres and the like, plush accoutrements to yuppie culture in the Eighties.

Becks and Fergie

In contrast to Lloyd, Sir Alex Ferguson is a coach who is regularly showered with near-unanimous praise. David Beckham, who began his career under Ferguson's tutelage at Manchester United, has been listing the virtues of his former manager as he prepares to face him with his new club AC Milan in the Champions League. Matt Dickinson of the Times charts the narrative of Ferguson-Beckham:

Sir Alex Ferguson will sit down for a Champions League press conference today and wish he was anywhere else. Cleaning Mike Riley’s car, polishing Arsène Wenger’s boots ... anything but talk about David Beckham.

“Christ, three seconds,” the Manchester United manager grumbled when he walked straight into a question about the former United player in Milan three weeks ago. He was no less sour on his way out: “There’s another 30 minutes of my life wasted.”

Ferguson’s cantankerous attitude may be understandable given that being interrogated incessantly about Beckham’s haircuts, wife, England performances and world player nominations was part of the reason he jettisoned him in 2003.

However, it risks skipping over one of his greatest legacies at Old Trafford, something as impressive as filling the trophy cabinet throughout more than two decades.

It is Ferguson’s achievement in turning United into not merely a football club, but an educational establishment; in producing not just better footballers, but better people. And Beckham, despite being cast out, is more than happy to add his glowing testimony.

Speak to Beckham about his formative years at United and he will talk, as will any of those who have come through the youth ranks, about the lessons repeatedly drummed into them: humility, respect for elders, desire, determination, loyalty, good manners.