Boris Yeltsin's legacy lives on - at least in tennis, writes Johnny Watterson in Paris, as the French Open begins.
Whenever Boris Yeltsin settles into his VIP seat at tennis venues, he always appears to be a happy man. He has reason. Of the top 40 female players in world tennis, 10 of them are Russian. Five of that group - Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova, Elena Dementieva, Anastasia Myskina, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Nadia Petrova - are ranked inside the top 10.
Even three years ago that would have been unthinkable. There would have been no female Russian player in the top 10 and depending on the whims and commitment of the wasted talent, Anna Kournikova, no player would have occupied even a top 20 place.
To now occupy 25 per cent of the places in the top 40 of the women's game represents a stunning turnaround for the game in Russia and greatly changes the power base of world tennis.
The formerly all-conquering USA has five players ranked in the top 40 and only two of those, Lindsay Davenport and Serena Williams, are inside the top 10. Venus, Serena's championship winning sister, has slipped to Number 13. And Jennifer Capriati? She's at 15. The UK and Ireland have no players in the top 40.
Last year Russia won three of the four women's Grand Slam trophies. Myskina first won the French Open, which begins today in Paris, by beating her compatriot Dementieva in the final before Sharapova triumphed over Serena Williams four weeks later at Wimbledon. Kuznetsova, unheralded, largely unknown, and a complete outsider, claimed the third trophy of the year in New York at the US Open.
Such has been the speed at which the bunch of Russians have elbowed their way to the top of the game that observers have begun to look up and wonder where the revolution began. One of the principal answers has been the influence of the tennis enthusiast regularly seen in the comfy seats - former Russian president Yeltsin.
Yeltsin's active promotion of the game and his ability, while in office, to drive money into it has been widely acknowledged as having had a dramatic effect. His championing of the sport throughout the 1990s injected badly needed cash and raised its profile high beyond what any player, bar Kournikova, had been able to do.
Men's tennis also benefited from Yeltsin's patronage, although there have not been the same strides as in the women's game. Russia did win a Davis Cup, but only the US and Australian Open champion Marat Safin has cracked the Grand Slams and kept his ranking consistently inside the top 10 in the world.
Before last season's French Open women's final at Roland Garros, Myskina said that Yeltsin had changed everything. "He brought tennis up from nowhere. He's kind of our grandpa," she said.
"A lot of politicians started to play so a lot of money started to be around tennis and it became more popular. People started playing, a lot of people started believing in tennis players and that's why there are so many rich tennis clubs right now, " Myskina said.
After the Paris final Yeltsin, who began playing the game in earnest in 1992, had lunch with the top players to congratulate them on their performances and offer advice on the taking of Wimbledon, two weeks later.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soviet players were a rarity. In the 1970s Olga Morozova, who now coaches Dementieva, flew the flag. In the 1980s it was Natasha Zvereva and then Kournikova arrived before the recent explosion.
In a country where just 0.14 per cent of the population play the sport, compared to 5 per cent in the UK and 10 per cent in the US, the turnabout is even more incredible. The leading club is Spartak, just outside Moscow, from where Dementieva, Myskina and Marat Safin all played as children. They have called it the "Ova" revolution and on the clay in Paris over the next two weeks, it will probably continue.
And be sure, Yeltsin will probably arrive too.