On the subject of hunger and desire in tennis, it may seem something of an oxymoron to mention Anna Kournikova, but the following is a tale told yesterday by Victor Roubanov, her coach at the Spartak club in Moscow.

To join the elite at Spartak, you had to go for trials and roughly one child in 200 would make it. The point about Kournikova, aged 6½, is that when her turn came, Roubanov asked her what she could do and she immediately pumped 50 press-ups on her knuckles. That helped to win her a place and thereafter Roubanov recalls the girl badgering other kids to play with her through their lunch breaks. “Sometimes,” he said, “she would play for eight hours without stopping.”

And yes, we tend to think that of all the Russian girls, she was the soft one. All of this is significant now because the word is that British kids are soft, too, and because Roubanov is over here and trying to find one that is not.

The news is that he believes he has cracked it. At the LTA’s invitation, he went to work at Bisham Abbey in 1989 with his wife, Olga Morozova, the 1974 Wimbledon singles finalist and former Soviet national coach. After a number of years, though, he asked if he could run his own programme in his own way, exactly the way he saw it working in Moscow.

So his story is one of Russian ways applied to the United Kingdom. His first products are at Wimbledon in the boys’ singles, two 17-year-olds, Neil Pauffley and Marcus Willis, both of whom, he says, will make the world top 50. They themselves tell you their sights are set somewhat higher, adding that their unusual grooming gives them an edge over their British peers.

There are other British hopefuls, Willis said, who “aren’t prepared to try everything to win”. He and Pauffley, who have been waiting since Friday to open their Wimbledon campaigns, talk about how others will “find excuses”. If all this is beginning to sound familiar, Roubanov reinforces the idea that Russians are simply bred to want it more, but believes these intangibles are not beyond our own children.

“Russian parents are tougher,” he said. “They push children. Everyone wants to see their child here in Wimbledon. If British parents see their children’s tennis dip, they say, ‘OK, we’ll concentrate on school instead’. They are not ambitious.

“There is a reason. Life is more comfortable here; British children have more opportunities. In Russia, with such a big gap between the rich and the poor, many have one opportunity: to play tennis. Sport is an opportunity to earn money. Parents here do not pay for tennis. Russian parents will sell their houses, cars, everything for their children’s tennis.”

Through the Spartak club, Roubanov has watched the progress not only of Kournikova but also of Marat Safin, Mikhail Youzhny, Elena Dementieva and Anastasia Myskina, and he has a Safin tale to demonstrate what Russians do and Britons don’t.

He once watched a “young” Safin, who was told to play cross-court to hit a cone ten times. “After half an hour,” Roubanov said, “he was still out there trying to hit it. It was: ‘Come on, do it, do it.’ But if that was here? The maximum would be ten minutes. ‘You can’t do it? OK, let’s do something else’. ” Roubanov is honest, saying: “You can’t change the mentality here.”

What he believes you can do is this: first, he does not believe in scanning the country for talent, it has to be local; and he will not consider a drive-in time of more than 30 minutes. The reason is that he demands of his six, seven and eight-year-olds three two-hour sessions a week. “This is very unusual for British parents,” he said, “because they are used to two and they also have horse riding, swimming, piano, ballet dancing.”

The parents, he says, are introduced to a culture that is unfailingly professional. They are given certain windows in which they are allowed to holiday. “I never cancel,” Roubanov said. “I only cancel if I die. There is high discipline. If children come and see everyone working, then they work, too. Not playing, but working. This all tells the children this is something serious.”

Bottom line: does this make Pauffley and Willis as hungry as the Russians? “I think they are more safe than the Russians. But they have to feel that I want it badly.”

He tells them to model themselves on Nikolay Davydenko because what he lacks in talent he makes up for in work ethic. Willis and Pauffley seem to like the sound of that.