What a difference a passport makes. Imagine this tennis scenario: Serena and Venus Williams will not be participating in Wimbledon next year as they will be joining a large training camp back home where they will be preparing for an inter-state tournament in which they hope to bring glory to their native California in the US national games.
After this tournament all the focus will be on the Olympics in 2008, and paying back their motherland for all its support by winning gold. They will be coached and micro-managed by cadres appointed by the Bush administration, many of whom have little or no experience in the world of top-flight tennis.
About 75 per cent of their earning will be handed back over to the state of California or the national government. And as the officials suspect the chances of the sisters taking gold in doubles is greater than in singles, they will be strongly encouraged to put the nation's needs in front of their individual desires and focus on the doubles game.
After training they are required to take classes designed to strengthen their patriotic zeal, a programme that requires detailed study of President Bush's key addresses.
It would be difficult to imagine the star sisters going for this kind of deal, but they were born in a different sporting world to the one the likes of Peng Shuai, Li Na and Zheng Jie come from.
China's tennis starlets have emerged from the national sports system, where promising kids play in the grassroot amateur schools; the most talented move up to the provincial level where they are nurtured and pitted against the country's best in the inter-provincial competitions, and the top players in these games are brought into the national team set-up.