For years, Australia has been pound-for-pound the greatest sporting nation, winning golds, grand slams and World Cups, taking particular pleasure in crushing England. But cracks have started to show. Here an Aussie explains where it's gone wrong and how failure is affecting the country's psyche

Thirty years ago, if you flew over an Australian city what would surprise you was not the swimming pools, but the tennis courts. Australian suburban backyards of every demographic stripe had one, or had one within reach: grass, sand, clay, sometimes concrete. Particularly in affluent suburbs, but elsewhere, too, most Australian kids were in walking distance of a tennis court.

These days, they are gone. There are no fixed statistics on the number of backyard tennis courts in Australia, but authorities ranging from the national tennis body to former Davis Cup captain John Alexander confirm that it has been a catastrophic wipeout, a virtual extinction. The home tennis court has fallen victim to the 10-metre swimming pool, to the subdivided block, to the granny flat, to the stack of apartments. A culture of leisure has transformed itself into a culture of property development.