Mr. Chip & Charge

• The ATP and WTA continue their race against crime

  2008-03-02 17:50:00
  Apparently, the WTA have found a brilliant solution to handle the problem of fixed matches. Find a guy in the stands who is reporting the score by phone and warn him, and then report the story to news agencies around the world. That will surely help tennis and is another great step towards a sport without any fixed matches. I hope you understand my irony. Seriously, what is the next step? Are they going to ban people from talking to friends while watching a tennis match? This all seems completely out of control.
  
  The men’s professional tennis organization doesn’t want to be any worse in their race against crime. Yesterday, the ATP announced that they have found another Italian who has been betting on tennis. Federico Luzzi is the fifth Italian to be suspended after Di Mauro, Bracciali, Starace and Galimberti. I wonder if they have possibly taken a look at players of other nationalities. Even if the Italians might be more betting-prone than players of other nationalities, I seriously doubt that they are the only players who have placed bets on tennis during the past few years.
  
  Also note that in a lot of other sports, it is fully acceptable for players to bet on events in their own sport. Luzzi has been fined a whopping 50 000 USD, which accounts for just under 10 % of his career earnings. Once again, it all seems like a way to hide from the real problem, but at the same time trying to appear like they are working on it with a lot of success. When are we going to hear about a real step in the right direction of protecting our beloved sport from pre-decided outcomes? It’s been quite a while now since the problem surfaced, but I’m still waiting for any signs of the tennis organizations understanding and working on the real problem.
  
  There could of course be the other possibility, and that is that they have indeed found that this group of Italians have been involved in fixed matches, but have chosen to convict them publicly for something else. That wouldn’t come as a big shocker considering the way the ATP handled the doping issues a few years back. The 50K fine seems completely out of proportion suggesting that Luzzi may very well have been convicted for something far more serious than small stake bets on 836 tennis matches.

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