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http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/11/09/game_must_get_its_chaotic_hous.html
Game must get its chaotic house in order after spate of scandals
A unified response is needed to tackle the scandals that have hit tennis in recent months.
Steve Bierley
November 9, 2007 12:08 AM
It may be seen as apposite that with the men's end-of-season Tennis Masters Cup about to begin in Shanghai this Sunday the game is currently almost deafened by Chinese whispers. The latest and most bizarre story concerns the possibility that Tommy Haas, a player hardly renowned for his fortitude of body or spirit under pressure, was poisoned prior to Germany's Davis Cup semi-final defeat against Russia in September.
"We take this very seriously," said the International Tennis Federation spokeswoman, Barbara Travers. "The investigation starts today."
It was the same statement the sport's top brass have been uttering ad infinitum over the past few months as scandal after scandal has rocked the game. Wimbledon may remain predominantly white but all shades of grey, it seems, are currently flooding over, through and around the net.
Martina Hingis tested positive for cocaine. Russia's Nikolay Davydenko, already under investigation for involvement in an alleged match-fixing scam in Poland, was fined for not trying in St Petersburg. The French kicked out spectators with laptops at the Paris Masters last week in a betting crackdown.
British juniors were suspended for posting party pictures on the internet, and a British coach was jailed for molesting a junior. Meanwhile, or so it has seemed, every other male player has a story about being approached to lose matches, and this after the ATP, the men's ruling body, initially suggested match-fixing was an invention of the media.
Suddenly the genteel "Anyone for tennis?" strawberries-and-cream-on-the-vicarage-lawn world of tennis - itself a marketing myth created by Wimbledon to disguise the corporate troughing - has been scattered to the four winds, even if the PR and marketing men and women are currently rubbing their hands and marvelling at the sport's newly discovered sex, drugs and rock and roll image. Forget the tirades of John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase, or the teens and pre-teens chasing Bjorn Borg's short shorts and golden tresses - this is the real thing. Haas poisoned? You betcha.
The tennis authorities, rarely the fastest-moving organisations in the world, have been left looking more dilatory than usual. This is a sport complicated by the fact that four organisations preside over it. These are the ITF, which is the overall ruling body, the ATP, the WTA, the women's ruling body, and the Grand Slam Committee, representing the interests of Wimbledon and the three other majors in Australia, France and the United States. To see them move as a coordinated force is a rarity, and individual pronouncements occasional beggar belief. The need for a tennis commissioner to oversee the sport has never been so compelling.
Etienne de Villiers, the ATP president who previously worked with the Disney corporation and is referred to in a less than flattering way as "Mickey" by many of the players, has been acting tough. He told a sports business conference in London last week that tennis was being seriously threatened by match-fixing and gambling syndicates. "As far as we are concerned, if they are involved in match-fixing they will be thrown out."
Yet this is the same organisation, 50% owned by the players, which at the beginning of the year fined Davydenko five times more for criticising the way the sport was run than, more recently, for not trying. It is also the body that mismanaged the nandrolone scandal four years ago, so that to this day it is believed that ATP trainers inadvertently administered the drug through contaminated substances, even though this was never proved. De Villiers' assertion last week that a lot of doping came down to "accidental or third-party influences" was scarcely believable, and it was little wonder that Dick Pound, outgoing head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said some federations did not have the stomach for the fight.
De Villiers may have been talking a hard line on match-fixing but, with the Davydenko issue still unresolved, the fact that the world No4 had lambasted the ATP president in Monte Carlo this year, suggesting he knew nothing about the game, has led some to wonder if the Russian is at the centre of a witch-hunt. It seemed so last week in Paris when the French umpire Cédric Mourier appeared to be telling Davydenko, whose game was malfunctioning, how to serve. A spokesman for the ATP brushed the matter off as a normal conversation but it was unclear whether an edict had gone out with regard to Davydenko's play. The supervisors took no action.
Davydenko's lawyer, Frank Immenga, placed further pressure on De Villiers and the ATP yesterday when he revealed that a Scotland Yard investigator, hired by the ATP, had told him that the Russian holders of nine betting accounts stood to share £725,000 on Davydenko's match in Poland against Argentina's Martín Vassallo. "We have done everything possible," Immenga said. "The question is, what is the ATP doing? They still don't know what happened."
De Villiers and members of the ITF and the Grand Slam Committee are scheduled to meet next week in Shanghai, where Davydenko will be taking part in the Tennis Masters Cup. All parties need to tread extremely carefully, because tennis has never been under such forensic scrutiny.
Game must get its chaotic house in order after spate of scandals
A unified response is needed to tackle the scandals that have hit tennis in recent months.
Steve Bierley
November 9, 2007 12:08 AM
It may be seen as apposite that with the men's end-of-season Tennis Masters Cup about to begin in Shanghai this Sunday the game is currently almost deafened by Chinese whispers. The latest and most bizarre story concerns the possibility that Tommy Haas, a player hardly renowned for his fortitude of body or spirit under pressure, was poisoned prior to Germany's Davis Cup semi-final defeat against Russia in September.
"We take this very seriously," said the International Tennis Federation spokeswoman, Barbara Travers. "The investigation starts today."
It was the same statement the sport's top brass have been uttering ad infinitum over the past few months as scandal after scandal has rocked the game. Wimbledon may remain predominantly white but all shades of grey, it seems, are currently flooding over, through and around the net.
Martina Hingis tested positive for cocaine. Russia's Nikolay Davydenko, already under investigation for involvement in an alleged match-fixing scam in Poland, was fined for not trying in St Petersburg. The French kicked out spectators with laptops at the Paris Masters last week in a betting crackdown.
British juniors were suspended for posting party pictures on the internet, and a British coach was jailed for molesting a junior. Meanwhile, or so it has seemed, every other male player has a story about being approached to lose matches, and this after the ATP, the men's ruling body, initially suggested match-fixing was an invention of the media.
Suddenly the genteel "Anyone for tennis?" strawberries-and-cream-on-the-vicarage-lawn world of tennis - itself a marketing myth created by Wimbledon to disguise the corporate troughing - has been scattered to the four winds, even if the PR and marketing men and women are currently rubbing their hands and marvelling at the sport's newly discovered sex, drugs and rock and roll image. Forget the tirades of John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase, or the teens and pre-teens chasing Bjorn Borg's short shorts and golden tresses - this is the real thing. Haas poisoned? You betcha.
The tennis authorities, rarely the fastest-moving organisations in the world, have been left looking more dilatory than usual. This is a sport complicated by the fact that four organisations preside over it. These are the ITF, which is the overall ruling body, the ATP, the WTA, the women's ruling body, and the Grand Slam Committee, representing the interests of Wimbledon and the three other majors in Australia, France and the United States. To see them move as a coordinated force is a rarity, and individual pronouncements occasional beggar belief. The need for a tennis commissioner to oversee the sport has never been so compelling.
Etienne de Villiers, the ATP president who previously worked with the Disney corporation and is referred to in a less than flattering way as "Mickey" by many of the players, has been acting tough. He told a sports business conference in London last week that tennis was being seriously threatened by match-fixing and gambling syndicates. "As far as we are concerned, if they are involved in match-fixing they will be thrown out."
Yet this is the same organisation, 50% owned by the players, which at the beginning of the year fined Davydenko five times more for criticising the way the sport was run than, more recently, for not trying. It is also the body that mismanaged the nandrolone scandal four years ago, so that to this day it is believed that ATP trainers inadvertently administered the drug through contaminated substances, even though this was never proved. De Villiers' assertion last week that a lot of doping came down to "accidental or third-party influences" was scarcely believable, and it was little wonder that Dick Pound, outgoing head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said some federations did not have the stomach for the fight.
De Villiers may have been talking a hard line on match-fixing but, with the Davydenko issue still unresolved, the fact that the world No4 had lambasted the ATP president in Monte Carlo this year, suggesting he knew nothing about the game, has led some to wonder if the Russian is at the centre of a witch-hunt. It seemed so last week in Paris when the French umpire Cédric Mourier appeared to be telling Davydenko, whose game was malfunctioning, how to serve. A spokesman for the ATP brushed the matter off as a normal conversation but it was unclear whether an edict had gone out with regard to Davydenko's play. The supervisors took no action.
Davydenko's lawyer, Frank Immenga, placed further pressure on De Villiers and the ATP yesterday when he revealed that a Scotland Yard investigator, hired by the ATP, had told him that the Russian holders of nine betting accounts stood to share £725,000 on Davydenko's match in Poland against Argentina's Martín Vassallo. "We have done everything possible," Immenga said. "The question is, what is the ATP doing? They still don't know what happened."
De Villiers and members of the ITF and the Grand Slam Committee are scheduled to meet next week in Shanghai, where Davydenko will be taking part in the Tennis Masters Cup. All parties need to tread extremely carefully, because tennis has never been under such forensic scrutiny.