When Wimbledon's all-night campers staggered from their sleeping bags to examine yesterday's order of play, the urge was not so much to join the queue as jump under a bus. The line-up was barely worth the cost of the gas for the primus stove, never mind what the touts were asking for outside Southfields tube station. Much more of this, and the road outside the All England Club will have to be renamed the Charisma Bypass.

The tournament badly needs some exciting new blood, and the good news is that a transfusion is on the way. The bad news is that the blood is not British ("100 per cent Anglo-Saxon with just a dash of Viking", as Tony Hancock used to say) though as Rafael Nadal comes from Majorca, we can certainly lay a serious claim to him.

Nadal will certainly know his way to the Red Lion pub and the nearest chippy, and as for the rest of Spain waiting for the great unveiling in Madrid on Wednesday, Majorcans couldn't care less. They can see people in David Beckham shirts, mostly chundering over the pavement, every night of the week.

Nadal, who only turned 17 earlier this month, lost in straight sets to Paradorn Scrichaphan, of Thailand, though only one of them has what it takes to win a Wimbledon title, and it isn't yesterday's winner. So why is it that a country like Spain can keep on producing world-class prospects, while Britain's tennis industry is in such a state that the receivers are about to be called in?

Well, as Alf Garnett might have put it, "It's yer sun, innit?" Obvious really, and it's high time we put the blueprint for world domination into effect. Global warming is already on the way, but the sooner we can turn the polar ice cap into something you can pop into a gin and tonic, the sooner the new Henman factory will be up and running.

The Government have a key role to play in this and, if they are really serious about the current crisis in SW19, they can make a start by appointing a Minister of Smog and ordering all households to return to the Ena Sharples era of Coronation Street. Bags of nutty slack and smoking chimneys. While we're about it, let's get the lead back into petrol. And bring back the Flying Scotsman. The trains might even run on time again. In a nutshell, no measure is too drastic if we're to save British tennis.

We certainly don't have a 17-year- old with the raw talent of a Nadal, who also happens to have a grunt way above the decibel level of anything Britain has produced in recent times. Nadal is the nephew of the footballer Miguel Angel Nadal, who used be known as the 'Beast of Barcelona', and every time young Rafael hits a tennis ball, the noise is not dissimilar to the "uuuurrrggggh!" emitted by uncle Miguel's opponents when he hits them with a two-footed tackle from behind.

Yesterday's defeat means that he will have plenty of time to get home and watch his uncle playing for Real Mallorca in the Spanish Cup final this weekend, but though he was eventually outgunned by his bulkier 24-year-old opponent, his tennis was sublime enough for Srichaphan to predict a glowing future for the young man.

Nadal has the instincts of a matador on the tennis court, but while the go-for-everything approach certainly got the crowd behind him, there were also some spectacular errors to go with his blistering winners. He is clearly a quick learner, however, as we saw when he immediately slipped into the old pro's ritual of minutely scrut- inising a selection of balls before deciding on which two he fancied serving with. When was it exactly that tennis became not so much Arthur Ashe as Arthur Negus?

The young Spaniard looks as though he will have a powerful frame when he finally stops growing, and it was the difference in power which gave his opponent the edge. Nadal may have the football connection, but Srichaphan is not unlike David Gower in the way he plays tennis. Touched with genius, but prone to attacks of narcolepsy, with the occasional shot (notably the chipped backhand drop shot) which would make you wince if you saw it in a school playground.

Nadal's original game plan was clearly to come to the net, but after making a complete porridge of the first three points and losing his opening service game, he ditched that idea and fought mainly from the trenches, combining brilliant winners from both sides with a labrador's instinct for retrieval.

His best chance came when he was leading 4-2 in the second set, but lost the next four games when the Thai hit him with a barrage of thunderous winners.

Nadal hasn't been playing international tennis long enough to be able to conduct a press conference without an interpreter, but purely on the weight of package holidays alone, we should be able to claim him as one of ours. If not, we'll just have to wait until the Spanish clamber into their shell suits and Figo shirts and start flocking to the Costa del Hampshire every summer - so, as Timmy's fans will be exhorting the lad this afternoon, "C'mon!" Show your support for British tennis, and burn some fossil fuels today.

**Thanks to reiko for locating the article. Please do not use or copy without credit to the original source and VamosRafael.com. Thanks.**

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