Sports movies are few and far between and those that have been released often fail to score. So, will the new movie about Wimbledon hit the target? Steve Pratt finds out.

If there were an Olympic medal given for making sports movies, there would be very few competitors going for gold. The odds are against film-makers who attempt to play the game.

Bad sports movies are the norm, with football movies top of the league, thanks to laughable pictures such as Escape To Victory.

When Dodgeball, a comedy about a sport that involves one team dodging large balls thrown by the other team, proves one of the most successful sports pictures of this, or any other year, you can gain some idea of how awful the others are.

The big question hanging over Wimbledon - which, as the title suggests, is a tennis movie - is not so much whether producers Working Title will have another rom-com hit after its summer movie Thunderbirds flopped. More pressing is whether the on-court action is as convincing as the off-court romance.

The answer appears to be 'Yes', thanks to having former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash choreographing the matches and CGI tennis balls put on afterwards to ensure shots always hit the mark.

The story follows the romance of wild card British entrant Peter Colt (Paul Bettany) and temperamental rising American tennis star Lizzie Bradbury (Kirsten Dunst) against the background of the Wimbledon championships.

The film doesn't have a lot to beat as tennis isn't a sport much seen on the big screen. Players, back in 1979, with Dean-Paul Martin as a young player who has to choose between the game and an older woman, is the most prominent entry in the genre.

Richard Loncraine, the director of Wimbledon, wasn't chosen because he's a tennis fan. "I'm a bit like most people in England, I believe. When Wimbledon's on, I watch it and love it," he says. His homework included watching every tennis video he could find, reading 20 books on the history of the sport, as well as novels by Cash and John McEnroe.

McEnroe was one of the famous players cast to add a note of authenticity, although he doesn't appear on court but in the commentary box alongside Chris Evert. American commentator Mary Carillo also appears.

Loncraine took the decision not to use famous players in matches on court against the stars because it would distract the audience and lose the story credibility.

Filming at Wimbledon itself, during the last week of the 2003 championships and for seven weeks afterwards, ensured the location was real enough. One of the biggest challenges was gaining permission from the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships committee. Unprecedented access was gained through a deal brokered by Mark McCormack, from sports marketing and promotions agency IMG.

"They were very nervous about us making a film there," says Loncraine. "Wimbledon is a very valuable property and a lot of damage could have been done. Once they accepted us on board, they were fantastic."

Scenes were shot on Centre Court during the 2003 championships. Bettany's fictional player was on court for a match before a real Tim Henman match took place.

Both Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst trained for several months to look like tennis players, but a certain amount of cinematic cheating went on. Every shot and every point in the matches was storyboarded in advance. Tennis choreographer Cash was like a dance instructor who acted out the players' every move, to be copied by the actors. "The men's final, in particular, is make-believe, but it's probably the ultimate tennis match. It's got everything - all the action, the dives, guys sliding into the net, around the net post shots, spectacular winners," he says.

Loncraine realised the need to make the tennis games, which are rather visually dull in real life, more exciting for cinema audiences. "I knew we had to cover the tennis in a very different way. I said arrogantly it should be somewhere between MTV and a Nike ad. I've made quite a lot of commercials so I had a go at doing that," he explains.

"We looked at all the tennis movies - there aren't many - and all the sports ads that have been made. We stole from everybody in terms of technique.

"We realised the rallies were the things that everyone could understand, even if they weren't tennis enthusiasts. It was fairly tricky. There's a lot of technique which hopefully you won't notice but gives the movie a kind of energy."

Bettany agrees that baseline tennis can be quite dull. "You're making a movie and want the most exciting tennis rallies you can have, so Pat Cash choreographed them with trick shots. Imagine trying to repeat a shot endlessly for the cameras. That would be impossible," he says. "So every ball that's served is a real ball. If it's one person in the shot, it's a real ball. The moment two people appear after the serve, it becomes a CGI ball."

Even the crowd was enlarged through computer effects as the makers couldn't afford thousands of extras day after day. They supplemented the paid crowd of several hundred with 7,500 blow-up dolls. "We would shoot 400 people applauding, then the special effects people would take the arms off these people and stick them on the dummies. It was an amazing effect," says Loncraine.

The overall result has been hailed as the most realistic tennis film yet. Cash was certainly impressed. "Obviously, since it's a movie, there is some artistic licence. But it was pretty accurate with regard to the world of the players and the atmosphere at Wimbledon it portrays," he says.

Peter Colt's story is the typical cinematic one of the underdog emerging triumphant. It's a narrative that has served sports movies well, as the hero or team battles through to the final round against the odds to provide the picture with a heart-pounding climax.

The stories of real sportsmen have provided the meat for some of the better sports-themed movies. Boxing is particularly popular, from Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull to Will Smith as Ali. The occasional real life sportsman has had success as an actor, including swimmer turned Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller.

US audiences are more tolerant of baseball and American football themed movies than British audiences, although we didn't mind farmer Kevin Costner building a baseball pitch to summon the ghosts of past players or Tom Hanks training an all-female baseball team during the Second World War in A League Of Their Own.

Costner is a contender for king of baseball movies with Bull Durham and For Love Of The Game to his credit as well. Sylvester Stallone, too, has displayed his ability to swap sports by taking the Rocky road to boxing glory in no less than five Rocky movies. He was less successful on the football pitch in Escape To Victory, described as "ludicrous beyond belief" by one critic, which was letting it off kindly.

The presence of football legend Pele, Bobby Moore and other famous players only served to highlight the silliness of Stallone in goal and a portly Michael Caine up front in attack.

No-one has really managed to bring football to the big screen with much conviction, whether it's a pre-Lovejoy Ian McShane in the Jackie Collins-scripted Yesterday's Hero or real life Blades fan Sean Bean as a brewery worker wanting to be a professional footballer in When Saturday Comes.

The Olympics have provided the basis for surprisingly few good movies, although the British had a winner when Chariots Of Fire was first passed the tape at the Oscars to take the best picture award. Time will tell whether Wimbledon can claim game, set and match and join it in the sports films hall of fame as the best tennis movie ever made.

* Wimbledon (12A) opens in cinemas on Friday.