Ball boy wonder

We leave the judgment of his talent to Jimmy Sinclair and his youth development team, though the lad's school, Wardykes, think he's outstanding: "a work-horse and team player with some outstanding touches". But if Rangers don't take their interest further, Jake may simply be another outstanding tennis prospect to have been sniffed at by Ibrox, like Andy Murray.

His sporting interest, insists Jake, is firmly rooted in football. Yet one of the world's leading tennis coaches, the Serb Bobo Grkovic, rates him one of the two best prospects he has ever seen.

Given that the 57-year-old Grkovic once ran one of the finest private tennis academies in southern central Europe, and has a most illustrious client list, this is no flimsy recommendation.

Grkovic trained the former world junior champion Janko Tipsarevic and the European under-12 champion Steven Diez, among others.

Tipsarevic dismissed Murray from the Kremlin Cup last month. "He wasn't even the best of the players I coached, but that happens," said Grkovic who was also fitness trainer to Slobodan Zivojinovic (Wimbledon semi-finalist), Jelena Jankovic (current world No.3), Iva Majoli (Roland Garros winner), and former Olympic bronze medallist and Roland Garros quarter-finalist Goran Prpic, of Croatia.

Milosevic put a stop to all that. Because Grkovic was ill-advised enough to meddle in politics, and his academy had royal approval, Milosevic made him persona non-grata, threatening his life.

Even shell-scarred, bomb-ravaged Beirut, where Bobo now coaches, was a preferable environment.

He wants to coach in Britain, where he believes youngsters are hungrier and still have the work ethic. And he is in the process of taking appropriate coaching qualifications, never required in his native country. Given his record, these should be a formality.

Friends in the UK are making enquiries about employment.

With London 2012, and the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Britain is now perhaps the most fertile coaching and elite performance market in the world.

For Grkovic, it would be paradise. "A month ago I was in the toilet," he tells me. "I have a place right at the tennis club, the biggest club in Beirut. There was an explosion.

I think the Israelis are bombing my house. I was in the city when they bombed before.

"Directly the bomb came into my building, I ran down and I saw the smoke. And I ran just 50 metres from my home, and I see the blood on the street, dead bodies, a woman, men dead in cars. Fifteen cars on fire. The political parties kill each other.

"They put a car with 100 kilos of TNT on the street at 5pm, when people come out of work and go into the shops. They are like animals. Ten died I think, maybe more, and 40 people wounded - young people, some kind of demonstration against politicians."

Yet he says he is "surviving good, better than Belgrade".

He established his academy in 1991. "Before that there was only socialism, no private initiatives allowed. I was the first. Until 1994 it worked perfectly. I'd 1000 children, biggest in southern Europe. But that was before the civil war. My country then was wealthy, more money than elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

"Monica Seles was a great champion in these years, and tennis was a great attraction for children.

I had 10 trainers and I was coaching at three clubs in Belgrade.

"After I had the 16-year-old world junior champion, Tipsarevic, I was sure then that I could make a few world champions in Belgrade. But the war stopped my plan.

After that, nobody could pay to play tennis, the destruction of the economy, and my tennis academy was destroyed by the war.

"Milosevic tricked me. I was also a journalist and an organiser of political opposition parties - democratic and green parties.

I was a royalist, and had connections with Alexander Karageorgevich in line of succession to the Serbian crown.

"I had his official support to make the royal tennis academy, but Milosevic stopped that. He banned any publicity in the media and threatend my family. He said I would be killed if I continued my political activities. I fell down to the bottom, let's say, for four or five years. I'd no job. No club was allowed to accept me as a coach, or even to rent me a court.

"But I survived those years by personal coaching, several of the best players in my country - Jankovic, Zivojinovic, Prpic.

"When the bombing of Belgrade stopped and the war ended in Serbia, I went out. We were under sanctions. Coaches from Serbia were blockaded. So I went to Spain for three years, where I met Jake.

"I also coached Diez, the European under-12 champion. They reckoned he was better than Juan Carlos Ferrero French Open champion in 2003 at that age. But I was not happy in Spain. It is such an arrogant country and tennis is going down, not like before.

"That's where I met Jake. Many children from the UK - and I can say that children from that country are the best I have met in my career. I feel they still have traditional mental strength and endurance.

"Jake is one of the two best talents in that respect that I have come across - gifted, mentally gifted, for tennis, for all sport - that I have seen in 30 years as a coach.

"He was laughing on the court, training under the hottest sun in Spain. He was never tired, because he liked to train. That boy is a miracle.

"But it happens that parents have to have money to pay for trainers, wherever you live: Scotland, America, Serbia, Russia. And his parents aren't wealthy, so Jake is playing football. And that's good, because I am also a personal fitness trainer, one of the best in my country. I will help him to be a great footballer.

"But I want to continue my project, my academy, in Scotland. I am not Jesus Christ, but I can do something there. I still have the energy and great experience and, let's say, talent. I think children under 12, 13, in Britain, in Scotland, have that traditional stability, determination. That's the essential thing for tennis - 90% is mental toughness. They have the work ethic."

He insists there is a connection between Serbia and Scotland, a similar population, six million to five million. "Yet we have three world top-five players in the world Novak Djokovic, Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and another five men in the world top 175."

He thinks Andy Murray may be just the tip of the iceberg.