THERE he was, grinning from ear to ear, a smile as wide as the Alps - and deservedly so, for Roger Federer's capture of the Australian Open crown had installed him as the world's principal tennis player.

No less eminent judge of a player than John McEnroe declared Federer to boast the potential of becoming the greatest player - ever - in the history of the game.

Some recommendation that when you consider the legends that have graced the professional game these last near-four decades such as Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Bjorn Borg, McEnroe himself and latterly Pete Sampras.

But while the likeable champion from Switzerland, who last summer captivated Wimbledon by winning his first Grand Slam title, proudly revelled in his second major championship triumph, it left a gnawing empty feeling back here in Blighty.

For how come Switzerland, whose sporting tradition seems more attuned to wielding skis or skates, lugging an Alpine horn, or maybe even dominating the world lederhosen-slapping or fondue-chewing championships, can still manage to discover a supreme talent to rule the world of tennis when Britain stands at the net empty-handed?

And this too from a nation who before the all-action advent of the Williams sisters could call upon the world's number one women's tennis player in the svelte and sublime Martina Hingis.

Is it something in that crisp, clean rarefied mountain air?

Whatever, it seems as if Britain could be playing until the cows come home - their necks draped in sweetly-clanking Alpine bells - and we would still not witness a triumph of any sort on any court, be it concrete, clay, asphalt, sponge, mud, sweat, tears, or even the verdant grass of dear old Wimbledon.

There is the rub, me thinks.

'Wimbers' is such an ingrained part of the establishment that for a Brit to succeed there, in spite of the Union Jack-waving, jolly japes brigade, would at best be inhospitable, at worst - well, it would not be quite British.

You can almost hear comedic genuis Paul Whitehouse declaim in his best plum-filled, colonial colonel voice: "A British tennis player win at Wimbledon? I mean, get his mitts on that shining silverware? Surely not with our reputation."

Wimbledon and its annual two weeks of champagne-swilling, strawberry-guzzling display of decorum and knowing your station, is actually no place to groom a home-grown sweat-stained, muscle-straining champion.

It's too redolent of another age - flannels, boaters, floating skirts, despite the myriad of changes the All-England Club Lawn Tennis and Racquets Club has undertaken over the last few years to bring the venue into the 21st century.

I fear that even with the onset of a roof to ensure being spared another embarrassing impromptu burst from Sir Cliff Richard while the rains fall infernally from leaden London skies, that all it will do is enclose the battalions of Union jackanapes into a higher concentration of fevered excitement that lasts for a fortnight only.

After that finals day when any American, Australian, German, Swede, Belgian or Swiss - delete where applicable - waltzes off with the men's and women's crowns, the nation's love of tennis goes back to where it mostly resides, a 50-week hibernation.

It's not for the want of trying. Millions of pounds have been spent on various development plans, whose grand design has been to foster trophy-winning talent, the next Fred Perry, the next Virginia Wade.

But no matter how much investment is made, it's as if it is being poured through a net and into an unfathomable black hole at the bottom of which is a trying, always trying, Tim Henman scrambling to get out and join the elite but with his shoulders weighed down by the burden of carrying the hopes of a nation - well for at least for two weeks of every year.

Meanwhile, the sport's most accomplished glittering prizes keep on being paraded above their heads by players from countries, some of whom boast a sporting heritage that would not be able to lace the plimmies of the United Kingdom.

So why not forget roofing the Centre Court. Let's turn that peculiarly unsporting suburb south of the River Thames into a car park.

Now that's where we could show those other countries a thing or two. We can park with the best of them - we've all had enough practice.

And then there's the ancillary events of graffiti, discarding empty cans and wrappers, or relieving ourselves against concrete walls.

Now there's a few events at which Britain would undoubtedly rule the world. Roger and out.

Updated: 10:44 Tuesday, February 03, 2004