ANYBODY for tennis? Queen’s club last week, the red and white advert ‘Mayor of London’ could hardly be missed as we tuned into French Open winner Carlos Alcaraz get used to the capital’s grasscourts

UNKNOWN to most British people, professional tennis players play tennis all year around.

But here we are on the cusp of Wimbledon and it’s the summer weeks where everybody is an expert suddenly about inside out backhands, bagels and breadsticks and whether Jack Draper can go all the way.

It’s difficult to know whether as a country we love or hate tennis.

When the grass court championships are on, the queues stretch around the block and beyond, and TV audiences are still healthy.

But we’ve allowed the rest of the tour to slip away to satellite channels and results barely make a few inches in the newspapers. We only hear of a faraway tennis victory if someone from our country is the winner.

By the way, this all makes Andrew Castle, the former British player who never got past the second round at Wimbles, to sound quite the expert when they sit him down in the commentary booth.

On he waffled, like only an elite broadcaster can, over the action at the warm-up tournament at Queen’s Club in West Kensington last week.

But for once, Castle wasn’t the only unhelpful distraction. As the players served, the cameras could not help pick up the red and white sponsor signs next to the court which read: “Mayor of London”.

All three of the mayors we’ve had in charge of the capital – and the nature of the role doesn’t help this – have at times suffered from the accusation of struggling to contain their ego.

Sir Sadiq Khan hardly needed to be competing with HSBC and all the other high-paying sponsors on the boards.

The colour scheme looked like a political advert. It wouldn’t be allowed under election rules if we were in the run-up to a vote.

Sadiq Khan, above, has said he wants to bring more major sports events to London and was promoting the UK’s brief tennis season by installing a temporary court close to Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square

But at least there was a reason behind the screen. His office is taking a bet on the idea that we do all like tennis enough to see more of it and it has teamed up with the Lawn Tennis Association in a funding push to get more people trained in running sessions in under-represented communities.

It was recently promoted by setting up a tennis court in Trafalgar Square.

The sad thing is you only have to walk through the doors of the Wimbledon site to fall in love with it.

It’s a special beautiful place, both thrilling and tranquil. Harrington was lucky enough to be taken there as a boy and immediately insisted we stayed until the last drop of sun fell on a mixed doubles match.

You get the feeling that if the same opportunity was given to kids who haven’t even dreamed about being able to sit and watch a top class tennis match – in the best place in the world to do so – we might have had a few more Andy Murrays over the years.

If you look at the crowd shots on centre court, it’s often still wine-weather white faces in boaters.

Tennis needs to work hard to break down that image of being a rich guy’s game due to the expense of quality coaching and club memberships.

Other countries have managed it. Now it may be that actually we only want to watch tennis for two weeks a year and switch it off for the other 50.

But Sir Sadiq might be on to something this time. More exposure, more interest, more rewards.

“We know that London is a tennis city, with iconic events like the HSBC Championships [Queen’s] engaging and inspiring the next generation to pick up a racket and play on accessible community facilities, including park courts in every London borough,” said the LTA’s chief executive Scott Lloyd.

“This partnership will help open up tennis and its benefits to even more people, by growing the number of LTA activators and coaches and ensure that the tennis workforce is reflective of the diversity of the capital.”

Watch out for the “activators” then, and let’s hope they’ve served up an ace with this one.