Tennis Special Report

Is there fixing going on in the sport of Tennis?

Men's players have been the targets of anonymous requests to fix matches. That's what top doubles player Bob Bryan told the Los Angeles Times. This comes after what happened last week in a suspicious match involving top 20 singles player Nikolay Davydenko. A British betting company Betfair had to void all the bets (7 million dollars) in Davydenko's match against Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina. Most of the bets were for Arguello, and the wagers were placed after the first set, won by Davydenko. Arguello won the match when Davydenko retired with a foot injury.

"I don't know of any players that ever gambled on Tennis." Bryan said. "But there have been some anonymous calls to players' with some monetary offerings. I know that. And I know every player I've talked to has turned it down. "

Bryan said that these phone calls were isolated incidents. Betting on matches will get players sanctions as severe as a life ban. How bad of a problem can this potentially be? Tennis Magazine's senior editor Peter Bodo told SprungOnSports his opinion on the matter:

"Kudos to Bryan for going public with the sobering concession that players are approached to fix matches." Bodo said. "This is a potentially horrible problem for the ATP, mainly because Tennis like Boxing is an individual sport and is almost impossible to patrol effectively and preventively."

That makes this last week even harder to swallow for fans of the game. As the clay court season in Europe, and the hardcourt season in North America heats up in preperation for the U.S. Open later this month, a cloud of suspicion now hangs over the game in a way that has never before been seen in the sport. If anything fishy happens in any of the matches, it will immediately go under the public microscope as something that might have been fixed or gambled on. Bodo went on to talk about the "the integrity of the game" but said that this situation may not come down to that:

"When you come right down to it, this has nothing to do with the integrity of the game, it has to do with the integrity of the people, some of whom happen to play Tennis. "

To cast an even larger shadow of doubt on Tennis, Bodo said that these kind of things are hard to avoid:

"It is impossible to imagine that with the way the tour is set up, these kinds of low grade betting scams transpiring in small far away places, can be avoided or eliminated. The only thing the ATP can do is demonstrate to the public that it is making a full effort to control the gambling issue as best it can."

This is not the PR that Tennis wanted right before the main summer season, but the fans can comfort in the fact the ATP is taking measures to prevent these things from going on. These scams may be going on right now in small and far away places, but what will happen to the integrity of the sport when an incident occurs at an event like the Rogers Cup (going on this week and next) or even worse a major tournament. Then, Tennis would turn into a sport like Boxing that has no integrity and will quite possibly be ruined forever. Is the game on course for a downward spiral? It will if this betting scandal isn't stopped or control. A few months from now, we might just be saying another sport bites the dust.