AGED 11, Jake Bruce was spoiled for sporting choice: football or tennis. He showed prodigious talent at both. The Arbroath youngster played successful trials for Rangers who took him to their residential camps for the next three years, but at the same time, tennis coach Bobo Grkovic identified him as one of the two best prospects he had seen in 30 years.

The Serb once ran one of the finest tennis academies in Southern Europe with an illustrious client list. It included former World junior champion Janko Tipsarevic (who had recently dismissed Andy Murray from the Kremlin Cup), and European under-12 champion Steven Diez. He was also fitness trainer to Wimbledon semi-finalist Slobodan Zivojinovic, Jelena Jankovic (the then World No.3), and the Croatian former Olympic bronze medallist, Goran Prpic.

Judy Murray invited Jake to train at Stirling University and Scotland performance coach Mark Walker gave him 10 lessons, but work permit issues stopped hopes of Grkovic coming to the UK.

Jake acknowledged yesterday that the lure of football with his favourite club (which once tempted Andy Murray) proved too seductive. Rangers continued interest for three years and Jake then played for Arbroath's youth side, but he failed to make the transition to professional.

"I went to Rangers because I supported them and always wanted to play for them," Jake said yesterday. "I definitely wish now that I'd focused on tennis. My life would have been very different. I'd have travelled a lot more, and done a lot more things."

Just turned 20, he is close to completing a two-year HND course in social science at Dundee and Angus College in Arbroath, where he lives with his parents. He coaches football and has managed a friend's fish and chip shop.

He has applied for a sports degree course at Abertay, but his ambition is to become a tennis coach, and Grkovic will help him achieve that.

Jake travels to Mauritius next month. "He will spend two months with me," says Bobo, "and will return every year. I will teach him all I can about coaching. I believe he could go on to coach champions."

The Serb has led a remarkable life. He is currently living in Madagascar writing a book on his life and Serbia's remarkable tennis success.

He was his country's fifth-ranked 400 metres hurdler before coaching a pole vaulter to the Serbian record, and built a reputation as a fitness coach. "There was no money in athletics coaching, so I switched to tennis." His greatest success was with young players, but detractors dismissed him because he'd not been a tournament player.

"Because of my experience in technical events, it wasn't difficult to become a good technique coach in tennis."

He established an academy in Belgrade, biggest in southern Europe with 1000 children. "I'd 10 trainers and was coaching at three clubs, but the civil war destroyed my academy."

His politics - he is an environmentalist - opposed the notorious dictator and war criminal, Slobodan Milosevic. His academy had royal approval, but Milosevic: "threatened my family and said I'd be killed if I continued my political activities."

So he left for Spain where he met Jake, coaching him on holiday in Puerto Banus, and his father, Kevin, attempted to bring him to Scotland.

They tried to secure a work permit, but say they got no co-operation from Scottish or British tennis. Bobo and Kevin suggest UK coaches were "protecting their turf".

Grkovic claims: "Tennis clubs hardly have a shilling from players and parents. All money is taken from sponsors and goes into bank accounts. Clubs are not interested in making champions. In Britain, Serbia, France, Italy coaches are like that. It's a small lake with many crocodiles in. Coaches fighting for the market, keeping creative coaches like me out. So typically, the lack of support by British tennis for my work permit was them protecting UK and Scottish coaches against me. It was not personal, but it was not good for tennis in Britain.

"'Watch the ball. Hit the ball in front of the body. That's £25!' That's British tennis coaching - absolute commercialism which explains all these decades of stagnation of British tennis."

His book will contain much more to embarrass the middle class UK tennis establishment, condemnation ranging from lack of investment by clubs to the level of sacrifice by parents. "Tipsarev's father wore the same pair of jeans for three years, and the same pair of shoes for two," he says.

Also a journalist, Grkovic has spent the past few years with his wife, Elena, in Madagascar. A draft of his book is with leading Serb publishers, Laguna.

The couple live in the village of Maroantsetra, close to a beautiful nature reserve. Bobo is operating a longevity project and developing forest tourism and doing some coaching. "The nature is amazing," he says, "but the village is 100 years behind civilisation. There is poor sanitation with breaks in electricity and internet supply, and you can rarely watch TV."

It has been a long search for peace.

He did not like "the arrogance" of Spain's tennis culture and moved to Beiruit where he coached Laura Sayoun. She became a quarter finalist at Roland Garros the next year, and in 2010 and '11, she won. In 2012 she beat Asia's No.1 player to win the under-18 singles in the Qatar tournament. Her improvement prompted other French-based players to join Grkovic in Lebanon.

With the war in Syria, he started losing clients. He was in the toilet one day at his home next to the biggest club in Beirut when a bomb struck the building. "I saw blood on the street, dead bodies, people dead in cars. Fifteen cars on fire . . . They put a car with 100 kilos of TNT on the street at 5pm."

He felt it was time to leave: "old, tired, and disappointed". Hence Madagascar: "to live in peace".

He will travel to Mauritius to work with Jake.

"People who become great coaches were not necessarily great players," says Jake. "Bobo did not start in tennis till his late 20s."

He hopes he can be Bobo's legacy to the sport in Britain.