Making speeches at Sir Cliff Richard's birthday bash is not a regular activity for kids from Summerston.

The working class enclave in the north-west of Glasgow is not noted for oratory but the glottal stop was no impediment to Melanie McKenzie.

The incongruous conjunction was conceived as a consequence of tennis. The garrulous Glaswegian was just nine when the Cliff Richard Tennis Foundation appeared at Parkview Primary as part of its quest to introduce the sport to children in poorer parts of the country and help them break through the class ceiling in tennis.

Up to that point, a racket was something her mum told her to stop making. From that day forth, it has proved a life-enhancing prop.

Now 20, the journalism student is in the third year of her degree at the University of Stirling, having secured a place on the venerated sport scholarship programme. Without tennis, she admits, such a scenario could have been compromised, but does she ever consider what life would have been like without the intervention of Christianity's celebrity crusader?

"Yeah, sometimes. I wonder if I would have been fat," remarks McKenzie with refreshing candour. Once the laughter subsides, she expands. "If I hadn't played tennis to a decent level, I might not have kept going through my teenage years because it can fall away with girls unless you're good.

"I've had to make sacrifices in my social life but I'd like to think I wouldn't have gone in the wrong direction. I ended up at university but I don't know if I would have done that if I hadn't been on a tennis scholarship. Summerston and Maryhill has got some big, flash houses but then there's loads of council houses and the school I went to was a mixture so I suppose I could have gone a different way."

Her own tennis career has been subsumed of late by her studies but it has been the focal point of McKenzie's life for 11 years. One of a group sent to lessons at Scotstoun, the others gradually fell away, leaving one hitherto asthmatic little girl to enjoy individual tutelage. Within a few years, the competitive streak that causes her to fall out with friends while bowling had eased her condition and established the opportunity to represent her country. Not to mention the chance to speak at her sponsor's celebrations.

For the past 18 months, though, McKenzie has been concentrating on offering others hope of emulating her. At the behest of Julie Gordon, a fellow coach at Western Tennis Club, she has been involved in a council-funded programme to introduce over 1500 children to tennis in Ruchill, Maryhill, Wyndford and Summerston, through lunchtime and after school clubs.

"You get some tennis coaches - and this sounds really bad - that are a bit older and I think younger kids respond better to younger, vibrant people nearer their own age," admits McKenzie, who lives with her mother Moyra.

Her enthusiasm is made clear by her impassioned opinions. Indeed, that eagerness is only supplanted by her zeal for the duo's other project - in conjunction with Western and the council - to upgrade the tennis courts at Maryhill Park. Facilities are needed to accommodate the expanding number of kids and, although the scheme has improved what is there, more work still needs to be done.

"When we first started, it was a mess and almost impossible to coach," recalls McKenzie, who reveals the newly-formed British Tennis Foundation have indicated a willingness to get involved as part of their scheme to upgrade rundown facilities for community use. "It's hard enough to try and get a kid to hit a ball without it bouncing unevenly. I don't remember them ever being good enough to have a rally on but we've managed to get them in the best condition I've ever known.

"A lot of the kids around there don't have as many opportunities but the enthusiasm is the same wherever you go and it shouldn't matter whether they can afford it or not. I'd love to take some of the Maryhill kids down to Wimbledon one year because they have a different reaction to things like that. They get really excited because a lot of them have never been outside Glasgow but the kids at Western go to Australia for the summer and that kind of thing."

McKenzie, herself, is going travelling in June for a short spell with Camp America. While she is there - "I'm 21 two days before I go," she says with a mischievous nod towards the legal drinking age - she intends to investigate the possibility of a university tennis scholarship.

The appeal of the "Maryhill kids" - as Sir Cliff can concur - may prove too difficult to resist, though.