Sideline Cut/Keith Duggan: On Thursday night at the Trilogy event tennis exhibition, I saw the light and it was beautiful. Tennis is the answer. It is the only way forward for Ireland.

We ought to define ourselves as the nation of the backhand. All other sports should be suspended or abandoned until we take our place among the elite tennis capitals of this world.

It is staggering and absolutely wrong that we have yet to produce a grand slam tennis star. Needless to say there were no allowances made for the development of such in the Budget. As is the case with most digestive troubles in Irish society, the GAA is to blame. It gobbles all of our young. Who is to say there is not a potential Wimbledon champion engrossed with playing junior football for Bunnyconlon right this very moment?

Tennis is the sport most ideally suited to soothing the Irish temperament. It is typically perverse of us to have generally ignored it for so long. If the English had introduced tennis instead of architecture to this country there would have been no 1916. Padraig Pearse would have been an umpire. As far as I could make out on Thursday evening, merely watching tennis pacifies us and cheers us up no end. Actually playing the game en masse could have a transforming effect. The sports we love tend to leave us upset. Tennis promises a better future.

The need for redress is urgent. If the Cork hurlers are going to be idle this winter, they may as well set the ball rolling. The basic principles are the same; tennis involves a ball and a bat, it features a net and requires deft hand-to-eye co-ordination. If anything, tennis is possibly slightly the easier sport as there are no 65s.

The bet here is that the Cork lads would take to tennis like ducks to water. After three weeks of practice, Diarmuid O'Sullivan would probably be serving at an average of 280 m.p.h. It is hard to see anyone other than Andre Agassi on his day beating Donal Óg Cusack along the baseline. And if we are cute about it, we might be able to slip Seanie McGrath in as a junior for this year's Wimbledon. The sooner we get some silverware in the cupboard, the better.

The Corkies could travel the land giving Harlem Globetrotter-type exhibitions, with Frank Murphy as umpire. They could introduce little indigenous quirks, like an annual Forehand Fáda competition. Anything to raise the profile.

WE have a fair bit of catching up to do as the inaugural Collins Cup demonstrated the other evening. The main match of the night featured Ms Monica Seles playing Ms Anna Kournikova. They shook hands at the net and had a great old chat about things before the match got under way, which seems like a terrific way to begin any sports contest.

Ms Seles is celebrated for having won a heap of trophies a few moons ago and for emitting distinctive vocal sounds when she hits the tennis ball. It is a noise not so much of the tennis world as of the animal kingdom. It is the kind of noise that a small, cute hamster might make if he/she was desperately trying to push a refrigerator out of the way.

Sadly, it is a feature of her game she appears to have abandoned but Ms Seles made up for it by being thoroughly agreeable and as friendly an international sports star as you could imagine.

Ms Kournikova is celebrated for not having won a heap of trophies and for being the cause of distinctive vocal sounds whenever she, well, does anything at all. Mostly male sounds, it has to be said. Ms Kournikova (tennis is utterly civilised and could teach much to other games. If we do bother competing at international soccer again, our commentaries should ideally go something like: "And Mr Keane is admonishing Mr McAteer for a wayward pass. Oh, a long ball from the Russians and Mr Harte may struggle for pace here," etc) served first.

For a while, it looked like Ms Kournikova was going to hit a lot of double faults but word went round that we have placed a stealth tax on such transgressions in this country and her service improved dramatically. The effect that the young Russian lady had on certain sections of the audience was fascinating to behold. A quick demographic scan of the crowd suggested that the father/teenage son was a popular combination. It can always be said that for a hour and half, at least, in December 2002, those fraught partnerships looked out upon the world and were in precise agreement as to what they saw. Ms Kournikova brings to mind the Wildean philosophy that one should either be a work of art or wear a work of art.

The expert opinion on Ms Kournikova is that she has bundles of talent but tends to use it sparingly and that she loses more than she ought to. It doesn't really matter though because she loses with such grace and charm that you generally end up feeling sorry for the winner. After she lost on Thursday, she played an exhibition game against a Cork lad, which was encouraging for the chances of Ireland's tennis revolution kicking off in the Rebel county.

AS I see it, there is no reason Amhrán na bhFiann should not be heard regularly around the fabled lawns of Wimbledon within the next five or six years. It is just a hunch but I feel certain that tennis is what we Irish were born to do.

There are some teething problems. For instance we are, in general, nowhere close to being tanned enough. Only Marty Whelan would make the cut on that front and he looks like more of a Slavic tennis coach or a tennis dad. And our ball children are, though willing, a bit chaotic. Several times on Thursday evening, the world's best players had to literally plead with the native ball children to return the balls to play. Their thriftiness was the first manifestation of Charlie McCreevy's Ireland, where we have to grimly hang on to whatever we have got. Also, it is not clear where Croke Park stands on tennis tournaments.

Government support is vital. We are not sure when the annual congress for Irish tennis takes place, but we are recommending here that a grant of

€60 million be given on behalf of the taxpayer. A few grand slam wins and the debt will be met.

The world needs the Irish equivalent of the Williams sisters. They are out there, somewhere. Let us search for them now and let us also find the Irish Mark Philippoussis before Louis Walsh does. Let us play the Moldovans at tennis and the French, the Swedes and the Americans and let us beat them all. We have ignored our destiny for too long. Let us start now. Service, please.