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12/24/08 10:12 PM | Jonathan Morgan
In 2006, Davydenko and the Russians won the Davis Cup and Nikolay had just finished up the best year of his career, finishing at #3. His 2007 though, would be earth-shaking.
Davydenko kicked 2007 off in Doha, reaching the semifinals before Andy Murray took him out. In that match, he took an injury timeout for a foot injury that would appear later on in the year as well. The next week in Sydney, he retired in the 2nd round against Paul-Henri Mathieu, throwing his Australian Open into doubt. During that same week, Nikolay was fined $10,000 by the ATP for claiming that top players (such as himself) had pulled out of Sydney because they did not care about it. Because the first slam of the year is the week afterwards, he had a point, but the way he worded it was fine-inducing.
He ended up playing the Australian, breezing through the first three rounds without dropping a set. He played the talented Berdych in the 4th round and won in 4 awesome sets to make the quarterfinals. There he faced Tommy Haas again. Tommy beat Nikolay 7-5 in the 5th, sending Davydenko home.
Soderling beat him in the first round in Marseille before Davydenko made the semifinals in Rotterdam. There he met Ljubicic, who win in a 3rd set tiebreaker. After that loss, Davydenko fell to #4 in the ranks. He lost to Olivier Rochus in Dubai, but finally won a few rounds in Indian Wells. In the 4th round there, he again lost to the steadily rising Andy Murray. A 3rd round loss in Miami to Amer Delic followed, and a loss to Mathieu in the Davis Cup. Safin won the 5th rubber to advance the Russians to the next round though. Davydenko’s year was average at best for the first quarter.
That April, Nikolay called ATP chairman Etienne De Villiers out, calling him incompetent. Seeing what transpires in the next few months, one could look back to say he shot himself in the foot and put a bounty on himself with those comments. Monte Carlo was a repeat of the year before, as he again lost to Soderling in the opening round. Things got worse when he had to pull out of the quarterfinals of Barcelona with a wrist injury. The World #4 lost in Estoril’s first round the next week as he seemed to be going swiftly downhill. He turned it around in Rome, battling through to the semifinals where he faced Rafael Nadal. Nadal won a crazy 3 set match that lasted well over 3 hours. After the match, Davydenko joked that he almost felt like he was going to die on court!
After that Rome run, Nikolay got back up to #3 in the world, taking it back from Andy Roddick. Things went back downhill as Hewitt beat him early in Hamburg and he was unable to defend his title in Poertschach, losing to Monaco in the quarters. As usual though, Davydeno had another awesome Roland Garros.
Nikolay got revenge for his quarterfinal loss to Nalbandian in the 06 French by beating the Argentine in the 4th round. After beating Canas in the quarterfinals, he had a very strange showing against Federer in the semis. Davydenko was up a break in all 3 sets, served for both the second and third sets, and still lost in straights. He got back up to #3 the week afterwards, but even with a 2nd round loss in Halle, he dropped to #4. He actually won a match in Halle over Jurgen Melzer, but not before he was struck in the eye with one of the Austrian’s serves late in the match. He was fine, and put in the best Wimbledon performance of his career. In the second round he was down 2-0 sets to Chris Guccione before fighting back and winning in 5. Before his 4th round loss to Baghdatis, Nikolay stated that Wimbledon was the most boring tournament in the world.
Even with his best Wimbledon run, Davydenko fell to #5 in the ranks. Nikolay lost to Monfils in the first round in Gstaad, then lost to Serra in the opening round of Amersfoort. There were some grumblings of some dirty work in Amersforrt regarding Davydenko. Nikolay won the first set 6-4. For some reason, his odds for winning the match went up as opposed to down, especially since Davydenko would have been the favorite anyway. He went on to lose the next two sets 6-1, 6-1, just a tad bit strange.
After another early round loss in Umag, Davydenko looked toward his racquets for some answers. He switched to a different racquet in Halle for the grass season but did not switch back for the clay, something he acknowledged after the Umag loss. Davydenko was defending the title in Sopot, Poland and looked like he was well on his way after beating Pavel in the first round. But his 2nd round match would change the course of his career.
Davydenko faced Martin Vassallo Arguello in the 2nd round in Sopot. There was word of a slight injury of Davydenko’s before the match, the same foot injury from Doha, and the betting markets tipped slightly towards the Argentine prior to the match. Even after Davydenko raced to an easy 6-2 first set, millions of dollars were being placed on Vassallo Arguello to make the comeback. At the start of the second set, Davydenko called for a trainer. The trainer would then come out to Davydenko at every changeover, and the betting market went crazy. 7 million dollars in total were bet on this match, ten times more than a typical match at a lower-level tournament such as Sopot. With all the money coming in for the Argentine, Davydenko’s odds mysteriously went up while Vassallo Arguello’s went down, despite Davydenko’s first set win. Something was amiss as Vassallo Arguello took the second set 6-3.
Davydenko ended up retiring at 1-2 in the third. Betfair, one of the world’s leading gambling sites, suspended all bets made on this match while an investigation began. It wasn’t the first fixed match as many before this took place years prior. That summer though, more and more matches were showing suspicious betting patterns. Davydenko was the biggest name to be ensnared in it all, as he was the first one to be caught. All matches involving Davydenko would be suspended indefinitely on Betfair.
As the match was being investigated, Davydenko continued to play on. He was in Montreal the next week as the #5 player after his dreadful summer clay swing. After beating Nieminen in the first round, he said in his post match interview that he only found out about it on Friday the previous week when he was in Germany taking care of his injury. He said no one could have known about his injury other than he and his wife and defended himself, implying his innocence. In his second round match against Youzhny, he played terrible as neither man seemed to want to win. His foot injury seemed to be fine, however, as he played Stepanek in the quarterfinals.
Nikolay lost to Radek, but by Cincinnait, people were on his every move. After a tough match with Ginepri, Davydenko got in the zone and flew to the semifinals. Blake destroyed him. Even worse, Davydenko was unable to defend his New Haven title, losing to Simon in the second round. He was in the zone at the US Open tough, breezing into the semifinals without dropping a set. Nikolay also had something to say about this slam, saying that everything in New York stinks. He certainly wasn’t winning people over. He faced Federer again with much the same results as their Roland Garros matchup. Davydenko was only up a break in the first, but was up a break three times in the third set including 2 set points. Federer still won in straights.
Nikolay was in Beijing a few days later, and word was that he might be called to testify in the investigation for his match. His phone records had already been subpoenaed. He lost to Cilic in the second round before a Davis Cup semifinal against the Germans. The Russians won in 5, but Davydenko lost his opening rubber against Kohlschreiber. After the Davis Cup, he finally took two weeks off before coming back in Moscow and taking his first title of the year.
Nikolay defended his Moscow title without dropping a set, but it was his last decent result of the year. In St. Petersburg’s second round, Marin Cilic beat him in 3 sets. Davydenko got a code violation late in the third set for a lack of effort and was later fined for the same reason. Davydenko later appealed the decision and his fine was rescinded.
He lost to Baghdatis in Paris, playing absolutely terribly. The umpire even offered some coaching advice and Marcos asked Nikolay how he was feeling. His terrible form didn’t end in Shanghai, as he lost to both Federer and Roddick and failed to make the semifinals. The Davydenko-less Russians lost to the Americans in the Davis Cup final, ending their possible back-to-back bid.
It was a wild year for Davydenko. He ended the year at #4, he only won one title but had the best slam results of his career. It was his off-court comments and non-tennistic news that made the headlines though. After being cleared of his fine from St. Petersburg, the ATP’s investigation of the match fixing scandal took on a larger scope. Davydenko’s game at the tail-end of the year was increasingly bad, a possible indication that things were beginning to get to him.
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