Monday, October 15
Last updated at 6:40 am EDT
Phew. Next update on Thursday, October 18...
Tennis and Betting
The drip-drip-drip of information on tennis' gambling/match-fixing problems over the summer has turned into a steady flow over the last couple of weeks, prompting a look back at the long, long trail that's got us to this point.
First Instances
Chatter about odd betting patterns in tennis matches first began in the spring and summer of 2003, and a story in the Sunday Telegraph by Gavin Versi and Clive White publicized them in October:
Top international tennis players are deliberately throwing matches for financial gain. It is believed that bets of up to £80,000 have been placed by players, through their coaches and other intermediaries, with internet betting exchanges, resulting in massive pay-outs.
...The ATP were first made aware of the concerns of betting more than three months ago. Most of the players under suspicion are outside the top 100. However, last week the ATP took the unprecedented step of warning a former world top 10-ranked player against not trying after it was brought to their attention that there had been heavy, irregular betting on one of his matches, in which he lost in straight sets... The sport has long been aware of the lesser problem of 'tanking', whereby players deliberately lose matches, more often than not for relatively innocent reasons, like the need to move on to another tournament where they are contracted to play. Two weeks ago, Georgian Irakli Labadze was fined $7,500 (£4,700) for not trying. But deliberately losing matches for personal financial gain - not something Labadze has been accused of - is a disturbing new phenomenon within the sport.
"If they realise they can make good money from this it will increase as more players cotton on," said one leading fixed-odds bookmaker. "You've got to remember that it has only really become a problem recently with the explosion in the internet business, but it can only grow." It would seem that tennis, long revered as one of the last bastions of fair play, has finally succumbed to match-fixing.
Even Wimbledon has not been spared the embarrassment of dodgy results. Betting on one match at this year's Championships, involving a high-profile player, was halted when bookmakers became aware that the coach of one of the players was placing bets. According to a Sunday Telegraph source, an ATP trainer even offered his services to one bookmaker, promising to alert them to news of injured players, which would be in contravention of ATP rules.
Getting the "deliberately throwing matches for financial gain" part to stick proved very difficult -- only this summer, when players began admitting they've been offered money to throw matches, did a really tangible connection emerge.
The players who have come forward are a random and motley collection, but all have talked about offers made within the last two or three years. Were players getting approached back in 2003 as well, or did the operations reach a new scale sometime around 2005?
In 2003, $100,000-$200,000 was considered suspiciously high betting for a typical match at a small tournament (either on Betfair or with one traditional bookmaker). Spreading bets amongst bookmakers could net you about $500,000, estimated one of the Australian papers, which quickly followed up with their own stories about suspicious betting. Compare thatwith the match which reignited all the concerns this summer -- Nikolay Davydenko and Martin Vassalo Arguello in Sopot -- where the supiciously high betting amounted to $7 million worth of overall wagering on Betfair. (See that day's update.)
Either way, the story presented plenty of issues to unpack -- not least how the advent of online betting exchanges like Betfair were changing the playing field. Previously, large-scale gambling was centralized through bookmakers operating in a fixed physical location. By removing geographic restrictions, letting people fix their own odds and allowing in-match wagers, betting exchanges created an exponential explosion in the range of betting options available. Any match, no matter how obscure, was fair game -- all you had to do was find someone somewhere in the world willing to put up their money against yours.
It was like a stock exchange springing up where previously only large and stingy banks had existed. But there was also one bright spot -- because the betting patterns were publicly visible, suspicious behaviour could be immediately spotted and tracked. The same medium that allowed the tricks to be played also revealed them. Down the road, this would become significant.
A day or so after the story then broke, British papers reported that two matches were under investigation -- Fernando Vincente vs. Yevgeny Kafenikov and Jarrko Nieminen vs. Feliciano Lopez. The ATP had recently signed a "memorandum of understanding" with Betfair that allowed the ATP to be alerted to anything suspicious and gave it access to betting records.
All the players strenuously denied that they had any links to the gambling. Lopez threatened to sue, and opponent Nieminen said, "He was throwing up all day, felt horrible and really couldn't play."
Kafelnikov too threatened legal action. "The reports are tearing me apart," he said. "When I walked into the locker room here yesterday, all the players looked at me as if I'm their worst enemy... I've been around since 1992. I think betting hits any sport. I'd like to see this kind of betting banned." Vicente reported his mother crying over the phone. (See that day's update.)
Other players threw in their two cents. Some expressed concern about the possiblity of manipulated results but none gave any no indication that the problem was prevalent or that they had previously been concerned about it.
Wayne Ferreira said, "I know from playing doubles with him [Kafelnikov] that he has this problem that comes and goes and he told me it was back... There's inside information on any sport. OK, tennis is a little different, because it's an individual sport. But everybody knows stuff that they shouldn't know."
Safin, who spent this summer flatly declaring he wasn't interested in the issue, also dismissed it at the time as "just rumours."
Todd Woodbridge, then vice-president of the Players' Council, said, "I'd never heard of such a thing. If it is going on, the people involved have to be naive and stupid because they'll be caught and be thrown out of the game."
Mark Miles, then-CEO of the ATP, went so far as to be not only anti match-fixing (obviously) but anti-gambling: "We did not invite punters into this sport. If there's anything further we can do to escort them out, we'd be happy to do that." He also said it was the problems experienced by cricket a few years ago that had prompted the ATP in 2001 to establish an anti-gambling rule that suspended players caught betting on matches for three years and fined them $100,000 plus the amount of the bet. The ITF made arrangements for a former Scotland Yard detective to be available for investigating any concerns.
Because many of the suspicious matches had ended in retirements, many agencies were quickly moving to establish rules that required at least one set of a match to be completed for bets to stand. The Brisbane Courier Mail reported that an Australian state government had passed a rule allowing bookmakers to cancel bets if a match was not played to a conclusion.
After a month of buzz, things quietened down. None of the players being investigated were ultimately sanctioned. Ironically, the only player who ended up appearing in a court over match-fixing claims was tanking poster-boy Irakli Labadze -- and even that was just as a witness:
Cashpoint refused to pay out $23,000-$30,000 on a bet made on a 2004 St. Polten match by Martin Fuehrer, a bettor who knew Labadze. The company said Fuehrer knew in advance that Labadze would not win and voided the bet, prompting Fuehrer to sue. In March 2005, Labadze was supoenaed for the trial. "It was not upsetting, actually it was funny," he said after hearing the news. Of Fuehrer, he said, "All the players know him."
The outcome of the lawsuit is unknown, but Labadze could have defended himself with a track record which clearly shows he needs no monetary incentive to throw away matches -- the temperamental Georgian was once personally witnessed losing a match point on a point penalty.
Little else emerged, and by January 2004, the Sunday Telegraph was reporting:
Since the original story detailing match-fixing appeared in The Telegraph last October, there have been no new examples of apparent dishonest activity, as a leading bookmaker attested. "Last summer we were seeing two or three matches a week where the result was known before the players walked on court. It was so obvious," he said. "But since the story all the marked accounts have gone to ground: they only bet on bent matches so I haven't seen them for a while. For the short term anyway, these irregular betting activities have totally disappeared."
But, said the piece:
It has emerged that the coach of a top 100 player has been supplying inside information to a tennis betting website, providing surfers with injury news as well as assessments of players' form and motivation. Furthermore, at least three coaches on the tour are understood to have placed bets on their players' matches over the past nine months. The trio appear to be part of a small ring who have been operating to great effect on the tour, which has contributed to all accredited individuals at the Australian Open being asked to sign a declaration that forbids them from betting on matches.
The logical conclusion seemed to be that the culprits were a bunch of shady hangers-on who had been scared away by the bout of scrutiny.
Re-Emergence
The peace was briefly interrupted the week after Wimbledon 2005 with a match between Sargis Sargisian and -- who else? -- Davydenko at Gstaad. Large wagers were placed on Sargisian to win and two bookmakers voided bets on the match after Davydenko retired after the first game of the second set -- just enough to comply with the 'one set must be completed' rule.
The incident didn't cause anything like the stir that Davydenko's retirement against Vassallo Arguello would two years later, but it put watchers back on their guard. Ironically, it happened at around the same time that an online betting company became one of the major sponsors of the ATP event in Kitzbuhel, perfectly illustrating the mixed blessings of online gambling.
There was some public dicussion about whether the ATP should allow bookmakers to become tournament sponsors, evoking the controvery that used to accompany Virginia Slims' sponsorship of the WTA Tour. But there was one difference -- unlike cigarette ads, the greater presence and integration of gambling at tournaments could potentially affect the culture of the sport in a very fundamental way. Despite Miles' words about wanting to 'escort punters out', no policy on betting sponsorship has ever been publicly articulated, and the relationship remains uncomfortable but ongoing one.
Though nothing too untoward happened in the months following the Sargsian-Davydenko match, 2006 proved worrying. The Sunday Telegraph reported that the match between Richard Bloomfield and Carlos Berloq had been marked by odd betting patterns:
There is no suggestion in this case that either player acted improperly - Bloomfield said he did not bet, and Berlocq explained that he was suffering from an injury... While betting coups have been fairly widespread in men's tennis since the advent of internet betting, this is the first time that a match at a grand slam has attracted such widespread publicity. That is due to the pattern of betting rather than the £340,000 wagered on the British No 7 to win. He was still being heavily backed when the odds shortened to 10-1 despite being ranked 170 places below his opponent.
There is a fear that the betting syndicates that largely withdrew from the sport following the revelations may now be back circling it once more. The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that the Bloomfield-Berlocq match was not the only one at Wimbledon last week to arouse suspicion over betting patterns. In another, a player with poor recent form was heavily backed specifically to win in straight sets. Heavy gambling on set-betting, as it's called, in nondescript matches is unusual and was particularly so in this case. Normally the difference in odds between a player winning a match by any scoreline and doing so in straight sets is significant, but on this occasion they were almost identical.
"I am not saying that any player was paid to lose, but what I am saying is that in all probability the outcome of these matches was predictable before the players stepped on to the court," said one leading London bookmaker. "If you went to a casino and stood beside a roulette wheel that came up red 60-odd times in a row, you may start to look under the table to see what was happening to cause such an extraordinary run. It is mathematically possible, but at odds of hundreds of millions to one, highly improbable."
This story struck a softer note as far as implicating players goes, but it also quoted a British player saying, "We all know that it goes on. I was never approached myself but I know players who were." The remark was an early forerunner to similar ones made by players this year.
Over time, bookmakers had compiled a list of matches they felt were were fixed or otherwise affected by inside knowledge, and Tennis.com published part of that list this August [disclosure: I work for the site and edited the story]. It showed a batch of suspect results during the autumn of 2006:
Julien Benneteau (FRA) def. Sergio Roitman (ARG) 6-3, 6-0 Moscow October, 2006
Allegation: Tanking.
Betting Pattern: Benneteau's odds go from 1.32 to 1.03 shortly before the match after little movement the day before the match.
Result: Benneteau wins easily. A significant pre-match betting move indicating that someone knew that Roitman would not be competitive.Martin Vassallo Arguello (ARG) Juan-Pablo Guzman (ARG) 2-6, 6-3, 7-5 Palermo September, 2006
Allegation: Match Fixing.
First-round match. Massive betting fluctuation in the match suggesting that it was always going to go three sets.
Betting Pattern: Guzman was hammered down from 2.60 to 1.20 before the match. He won the first set as expected. Then with the score at 6-2 2-0, large amounts of money came to lay (betting against) Guzman (indicating strong expectation that he'd lose the 2nd set). The best man was left to fight out the decider.
Result: The match went three sets, with Vassallo-Arguello winning in the third.Martin Vassallo Arguello (ARG) def. Oscar Hernandez (ESP) 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 Palermo September, 2006
Allegation: Match Fixing.
Second-round match. A Vassallo comeback was expected given the market movement in the final set.
Betting Pattern: Hernandez's odds to win the match was strangely high (2.50) when he leading 4-2 in the deciding set. This may well have been injury-related but unusual betting patterns were still notable.
Result: Vassallo wins the last four games of match.Nicolas Almagro (ARG) def. Martin Vassallo Arguello (ARG) 6-2, 6-2 Palermo September, 2006
Allegation: Tanking.
Betting Patterns: Odds on Almagro to win in straight sets was backed down to 1.20 on Betfair just before the match was due to begin. This was the third time in a week that a match involving Vassallo Arguello aroused suspicion.
Result: Easy straight-sets win to Almagro. A significant pre-match betting move indicating that someone knew that Vassallo would not be competitive.Filippo Volandri (ITA) def. Simone Vagnozzi (ITA) 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 Bucharest September, 2006
Allegation: Match Fixing.
Betting Pattern: Volandri playing a lower-ranked Italian, No. 194 Vagnozzi. Lots of money was taken well under the expected odds for Volandri to win in three sets. The 2-1 set result was traded from 4.50 into 1.70 - a massive move - one that indicates near-certain expectation that the match would go three sets and be won by Volandri.
Result: The pre-match betting move was confirmed when Volandri won two sets to oneMikhail Youzhny (RUS) def. Potito Starace (ITA) 6-0, 6-4, 6-3 Wimbledon June, 2006
Allegation: Straight-Sets Tanking.
Starace's game is certainly not suited to grass, but there was a massive gamble on the straight sets option.
Betting Pattern: Over $400,000 was traded at Betfair on Youzhny to win in straight sets. Youzhny started at 1.19 to win the match by any score and 1.22 to win in straight sets - strangely, almost the same odds.
Result: Youzhny in straight sets. A significant pre-match betting move indicating that someone knew that Starace would not be competitive.No definitive statements can be made because the matches listed are only a selection and not all are equally dubious. But for what it's worth, there are some patterns. Certain nationalities show up more often than others, squaring with the way one bookmaker escribed the problem players in an Austrian outlet: "Italians, Argentines and Davydenko."
Certain names also pop up repeatedly, matches are often between compatriots and/or friends, and some involve a huge ranking discrepancy between the two opponents.
Each of those are self-fulfilling to some extent -- players get asterisked and their matches are scrutinized more closely, matches betwen friends tend to be mentally difficult and prone to odd fluctuations, and players can lose concentration when playing inferior opponents. But still, it's something concrete to work with when trying to analyze what's going on.
As far as reaching conclusions about individual players goes, enough plausible explanations exist that there's nothing to do for the moment but withhold judgment. At the same time, though, there's also a perverse value to getting their names out there. It's not pleasant for a player to have his name bandied about in connection to something like this, but anyone trapped in a bad situation automatically becomes useless to match-fixers if a link is publicized. Anyone eager to ever bet on a Davydenko match ever again? No. So he's out of it by default, if nothing else.
The nature of the betting also reveals a profit maximazation strategy potentially at work -- double-dipping by offering odds on a player to lose as well as placing bets on the other player to win, or taking advantage of certain scorelines to get favourable odds. Sometimes, it would require the co-operation of both players, and sometimes it involves a superior player possibly manipulating the score to win less easily than expected. That means the losing player isn't necessarily the guilty one or the only guilty one.
One of the less obvious patterns to the names is that the players potentially involved expected to become superstars on the tour. And given what other players have related and looking at the list of suspected matches, it's not that hard to imagine how some get roped in. Scratching out a living by playing mostly challengers and small tour events, they may have decided to take some easy money for a match they were likely to lose anyway. Or they may have accepted an offer from a fellow player to co-operate in the outcome of a match. Over time, they slowly improved and worked themselves up into the top 50 or top 30 (or top 10) -- and found themselves unable to get out. And the higher they climbed, the more profitable their fixes and the greater the threat of retaliation or exposure.
All the players who've said they were approached but turned offers down -- Dmitry Tursunov, Janko Tipsarevic, Jarrko Nieminen, Thomas Johansson, Arvind Parmar, Gilles Elseneer, Dick Norman, Michael Llodra, Paul Goldstein -- also inhabit or used to inhabit the lower rungs of the professional ladder. The good news is that none reported any retaliation for saying no. But given how many have related being approached and the amounts they've quoted, it seems altogether different from the previous chapter of incidents in 2003, which involved smaller amounts and often seemed more opportunistic than manipulative.
At any rate, by March 2007 there was enough happening that, as Barry Flatman reported in the Sunday Times, the ATP got ex-Mafia boss Michael Franzese to come in and talk to the players in Miami about about the dangers of getting involved in gambling and match-fixing. Tomas Berdych related the experience in Montreal, striking a similar note to the scenario described above:
Yeah, he was talking about all his life, what it happens to him, all these things with the bad things, with the people from Mafia. When they catch you, it's like no chance to get out, all these things.
Imagine like if you have a situation that they're going come to you and they give you the offer with money and tell you, 'If you lose this match, you gonna get whatever.' You say,' Okay, right, this is shit tournament, whatever' -- it's already the bad thing. It happens once, and they gonna come again another tournament and you're going to say, 'No, I don't want to do it, I'm going to play.' Then the problem starts. So that's what I mean.'
...If it's like first time and somebody comes to you and offer you some money, you say, 'No, there is no chance,' they can't do anything. I mean, if they come, if they are not coming with a gun or something, [then] that's all right... If you going to be the one, the bad one, say 'yes,' then it's the problem.
In an interview with Argentine newspaper Ole last week, Franzese said the presentation was a tough one because it was also translated for players who do not understand English. Federer and Roddick spoke to him afterwards and asked questions, said Franzese, and the Russian players were worried given the threats that had been made to Russian NHL players in the past.
During the US Open, however, a column by Bill Dwyre in the Los Angeles Times quoted a player with a different take on the Russian reaction:
Another tour player who didn't want his named used talked about how angry he was when the ATP held its players' meeting in March at the NASDAQ tournament in Miami. "They had this expert, the former mob guy [Michael Franzese], come in and talk to us, and he had lots to say about how we could get hooked into gambling," the player said. "There were a bunch of guys kind of making fun of this guy, acting rude and laughing all this off. I looked around and it was mostly the Russians.
"Which I found interesting, because these are the same guys you worry about."
Federer described his reaction this week in Madrid: "When I went into that meeting, I was kind of ´what the hell?' What he said was interesting and scary at the same time."
The Catalyst
But who could have guessed all this was merely the prelude?
In the first week of August, Davydenko retired against Vassalo Arguello in the second round of Sopot in a match that attracted $7 million of wagering on Betfair ($3.5 million to be paid out) -- an amount Betfair described as 10 times what they would have expected for this kind of match. The pattern of betting was also striking: Davydenko began the day as a heavy favourite, but his odds dropped just before the match and continued to fall even after he won the first set 6-2.
The next day, Betfair announced that it was voiding all the bets placed on the match, an unprecedented step which thrust the match into the media spolight. For the first time, a tennis gambling story would prove to have legs.
Betfair's move was reported by the major wire services -- Reuters, AP, AFP -- and AP referenced the NBA's referee-betting scandal in its lead. From Reuters:
A Betfair spokesman told Sky Sports News: "The prices seemed very odd. "Davydenko started off as a 1/2 shot, which means if you put down a pound on him, you'd win 20 pence. He went on to win the first set.
"And yet, a set up, if you'd put a pound on him, you would have won £4.30p, clearly a lot more than when he was level at the start. That seemed to us to be very odd...there's something not right in that market."
A story in the Guardian said the match between Tommy Robredo and Steve Darcis -- another matchup between a top seed and and a lower ranked player, with the added intrigue of the unknown Darcis having won Amersfoort a week ago -- attracted $3 million in wagers ($1.5 million to be paid out). That doesn't quite square with Betfair's estimate that the Davydenko-Vassallo Arguello match was "10 times" the norm, but it's still a significant difference. Injury rumours around Davydenko could plausibly have contributed to some of the difference, but the direction of the odds at the end of the first set suggests more specific knowledge.
The first reactions from the two players were:
Davydenko: "During the match I was starting to get problems with the whole of my foot and it was very painful. Normally I never retire because I like to fight."
Vassallo Arguello: "I don't think that he [Davydenko] has anything to do with this. I was playing against him but he was playing also with an injury, and that is all that I know about it and that's also what I felt in the match. I felt nothing else."
There's no way Davydenko should have been able to say this unchallenged, given the similarities with his match against Sargisian two years ago. And given the number of apparently dodgy matches Vassallo Arguello has been involved in, some questions about him -- not just his opponent -- were also in order.
Neither has been tackled directly on these issues in public. Davydenko was dogged by questions at both Montreal and Cincinnati, but no one had the heart to ask if he had deliberately thrown the match -- he was asked only how he was reacting to the Betfair decision and the subsequent publicity. For its part, the ATP was hostile when Davydenko was questioned on the topic -- see the Montreal transcript and Cincinnati transcript. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported:
"It's not all bad," Davydenko said Thursday after advancing to the quarterfinals. "Probably 20 percent more fans know who I am now. Still, if I need to be more popular, I need to be top-five plus winning a Grand Slam."
As accommodating as Davydenko has been in answering a variety of questions this week - including those about the ATP's investigation - ATP officials remained testy about it Thursday. An ATP media relations staffer tried to redirect an interview question Thursday about the matter, but Davydenko answered it anyway.
It wasn't until new Haven, apparently, that anyone directly asked if he had intentionally lost. Here's an account of the answer from Charles Bricker in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel blog:
Did you throw the match? He turned to ATP translator Fabienne Benoit, as if he didn't understand the question. She spoke to him in German and he then gestured with his hands, as if to say, "What do you mean?" And then he said "no." But no what? That was unclear.
...So, after his interview session, Benoit said she once again spoke with Davydenko, telling him that if he didn't understand the question to ask, rather than leave reporters scratching their heads. So she asked him again, making clear exactly what was asked, and he said, "Of course not."
And Greg Garber in ESPN:
When the question was asked Wednesday night, Davydenko frowned and turned to Fabienne Benoit, the ATP on-site media manager. After a 20-second translation in German, which they both speak, he shook his head and shrugged, palms up. He responded by saying he didn't want to talk about the Martin Vassallo Arguello match.
Even after journalists replayed the tape several times, it still wasn't clear if Davydenko's "no" referred to the question -- or his desire not to talk about it.
Twenty minutes later, Benoit appeared and explained that Davydenko had not understood the question. When she explained it to him after the interview, Davydenko's response to the match-fixing question, she said, had been an emphatic, "Of course not."
He still hasn't been asked about about the fact that it was the second time that betting firms have cancelled bets on a match in which he's retired.
The Sopot match was also the main focus of his first US Open press conference:
Q. Why do you feel there was so much betting for you to lose in the match in Poland?
NIKOLAY DAVYDENKO: I think because of tournament I losing first round before. Some guys, like first round, French guys, first round, three weeks in a row. Because before Montréal, big tournament.
Normally last year I won this tournament, yeah. Like I don't -- because I need to defend points. I lose in New Haven. I need to defend points. I lose many points, and also here. For me losing points, I losing my ranking. What is reason for me something to do? If I need to still my position good, if I losing point, I losing my ranking and I go down. Instead of No. 4, I be the No. 6.
Yeah, and, you know, like how I say, I won first round there. I feel already before my first round I was injury, but I don't tell anyone I have problem there. I don't know why guys can betting. I don't know, I don't check by Internet who betting. I don't know how much money putting there.
Q. It's become quite popular with some reporters in this country to suggest that there's a Russian Mafia somehow with its fingers in tennis. Do you feel personally insulted as a Russian to think people are suggesting somehow the Mafia is involved?
NIKOLAY DAVYDENKO: First, I don't live in Moscow. I don't know really guys from Mafia in Russia, because I live from 15 years old in Germany. I don't know German Mafia (smiling). That's was pretty tough to say about Russian Mafia.
You know, like, maybe if you go now to Brooklyn, you find Russian Mafia here in New York, but I never saw no guys also in New York from Russia. I been Moscow only for Davis Cup and for Kremlin Cup, nothing else. Like for me, okay, maybe before you have like -- Russia is like all country from Mafia, but why not they speak about Italian guy? He's also from Mafia, no?
...particularly coming into the US Open?
NIKOLAY DAVYDENKO: Difficult, really. It's like mentally you're tired. It's not like physically. If you just thinking about, if you go to Internet, you read some press like writing about you something, you know, bad things, you're already nervous. You're coming to the court, because many guys -- I don't know like tennis players, but in Russia, some Russian players reading, and fans and everybody, and you nervous because, like, you have matches, you know somebody writing for you bad things. It's tough. It's like every day you like mentally tired tired. That's was for me good if you take rest for few months, nobody hear about me anything.
Vassallo Arguello was also questioned at the US Open, but only briefly about Davydenko.
Nothing much may have emerged from two two players at the center of the controversy, but the door had been thrown open as far as reaction fom other players was concerned. A vertiable procession related their brushes with match-fixing offers during the hardcourt season.
Bob Bryan started things off, telling Lisa Dillman in the Los Angeles Times in Montreal that "there have been some anonymous calls to players' rooms with some monetary offerings... I know that. And I know every player I've talked to has turned it down." A second story the following day reported that:
...[A]nother prominent tennis figure -- veteran coach and former tour player Larry Stefanki -- disclosed that he was approached during this year's Australian Open and pressed for inside information on another player by two men he didn't know.
This sort of thing has "been going on for a long time," Stefanki said... "Two English dudes. I started laughing at them and said, 'You're nuts,' "said Stefanki, who coaches Australian Open finalist Fernando Gonzalez of Chile. "These guys are gamblers for a living. . . . If it gets out, even one word, it spreads like wildfire. It makes the game dirty."
The paper also reported a few days earlier that when asked 'if men's tennis had a problem' (article's phrase), Novak Djokovic said: "Unfortunately, yes. Usually, it's more in the other sports like football, basketball. Now there is more and more cases in tennis, which is, of course, a bad thing for the sport and all the tennis players. Those kinds of things are putting away all the sponsors and all the important people from our sport.
..."Everybody has different opinions, you can ask me, and I'm going to say one thing. You can ask the other player, he can say the other thing. You can guess, but nobody can 100% know. It happens -- there are many cases as well about faking an injury."
(Note to Andy Murray: see-- it's not only what you say, it's when and where you say it.)
In a USA Today story by Douglas Robson during the US Open, Paul Goldstein and Michael Llodra became the first players on the record as saying they had been offered money to throw a match:
Veteran Paul Goldstein, who retired trailing Sebastian Grosjean 1-6, 1-4 Monday, said the offer happened in the last 18-24 months. "It was shocking and upsetting," said the 31-year-old American, who felt "uncomfortable" providing any more details.
Asked what he said when approached, the 97th-ranked Goldstein said: "I laughed. It never crossed my mind for a second."
Earlier this month, Michael Llodra of France said he received a phone call at his hotel from an unknown caller asking him to "be relaxed" in his next-day's contest. Llodra, a former top-40 player and two-time Grand Slam champ in doubles, said he hung up.
An SI.com story by S.L. Price related accounts from Dmitry Tursunov and Janko Tipsarevic:
Early this past March, on the eve of a men's Masters Series tennis tournament at Indian Wells, Calif., the phone rang in Dmitry Tursunov's hotel room. "Would you like to make some money?" the caller asked. It wasn't the first time the 27th-ranked Russian had been asked that question in that particular way. In the fall of 2006, Tursunov was contacted by an unknown voice offering cash for match fixing. "It happened to a lot of players," he said. "I don't know if it's the same person, but I think everybody gets contacted. And whether you act on it or not, it's a problem."
Last week, No. 56 Janko Tipsarevic told SI that he, too, has fended off gamblers seeking an edge, leaving the impression of a tour under quiet and slimy siege. "[Gambling] was the elephant in the room," said ATP president Etienne de Villiers. "So the elephant has finally come out."
Tipsarevic says he was approached by strangers "maybe a couple of times, but before they even say the price, how much, I say, 'Please, please, please,' and then they leave me alone. Normally it's a guy you've seen for the first time in your life. He says, 'Hi, how are you?' And then, 'I have an offer for you.'"
Tursunov later also told Russian newspaper Izvestia that he had been approached on two occasions, one of them at Madrid -- so both calls appear to have been about Masters Series matches.
L'Equipe quoted two players anonymously, one saying he had been offered $50,000 to throw a match and the other saying he believed he had seen matches being thrown - but did not know whether it involved gambling or simply tanking. In what sounds like an offhand estimate, he said "60-80%" of coaches go on internet betting sites in player lounges.
The US Open Los Angeles Times piece (above *) had Berdych saying "I heard it from other guys" -- not making it clear what 'it' refers to -- "and just what I heard, it was from the tournaments in Russia. It was Moscow and St. Petersburg."
The roll call continued slowly but steadily after the US Open, with Thomas Johansson and Jarrko Nieminen telling newspapers in their countries that they had been offered money to lose.
The Sun dropped a big one when it reported that Novak Djokovic had been offered $220,000 to lose a match in Pt. Petersburg last year -- the biggest amount ever reported. Djokovic's agent denied the story and Djokovic doesn't seem to have been asked about it during Vienna last week, but if it's true it would explain why his comments in Montreal were so strong.
That story didn't take off, but a new flurry of information was about to begin. After playing his last competitive match, Tim Henman talked to BBC's Inside Sport about the growth of gambling and players being approached to throw matches: "I personally have never experienced it but, listening to the players talking, it seems it goes on."
Just a few days later came came the story which took things up yet another level -- Gilles Elseneer telling Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws and Neil Harman in the Times that he had been offered 100,000 Euros to lose his first-round match against Potito Starace
Now comes Elseneer’s disclosure that, soon after he qualified for the singles event two years ago, he was approached “bluntly into my face” and told that he could make a hundred times more than his first-round winner’s cheque for giving up the match. “Think about it and give us an answer tomorrow,” he was told.
“I had my honour as a player to protect and Wimbledon meant everything to me,” Elseneer said yesterday. “They said I should take my time and give them my reply the next day, but I only needed a couple of minutes to realise it was impossible for me to contemplate.” He won in straight sets.
In Het Laatste Nieuws, Elseneer said the approach was made in the Wimbledon locker room and he was told he would get half the money before the match and half afterwards. The people involved were not players or coaches, he said, but they were people within the tennis community, or else they would not not have been able to get access to the locer room.
Dick Norman told De Standaard that he was offered half a million or a million Belgian francs to lose a challenger match six or seven years ago and was also asked to provide information about other players' injuries or form. "I didn't get involved, he said. "You never know what you're getting into. There people are capable of anything. I wouldn't want, for example, if they were to take it out on my family."
As October began, Arvind Parmar joined the chorus in a Times story by Neil Harman, saying he was approached at a challenger event a couple of years ago:
“A guy I’d never seen before just walked up and asked me to throw a match,” Parmar said. “He said because it was in my control, I should lose in straight sets and I’d receive X amount. I don’t want to say how much except it was pretty substantial. It took me half a second to say no.
“To be honest, I wanted to punch him in the face. I told him to get the hell out of here. Tennis was my life and I had my integrity and that of the sport to protect. I know there are people hanging around at this level of tournaments. I didn’t see him again that week, but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t still around trying it on with other players.”
By now, the focus was shifting from the recollections of individual players to the general pattern of suspect betting taking place.
The day before, the Journal du Dimanche -- which last year became infamous for a story which said Rafael Nadal was a target of Spanish anti-doping investigation Operation Puerto -- published a carefully-couched story focusing on Italian players. It said Potito Starace, Daniele Bracciali, Giorgio Galimberti, Alessio Di Mauro and Fredrico Luzzi had accounts with an online betting firm -- at least one of the players has since said he uses his account to bet on football matches -- and that the ATP had asked the European Sports Security Assocation for their betting records. The story added that ATP vice-president Gayle Bradshaw had emailed the ESSA requesting checks on Mose Navarra, Andreas Seppi, Simone Bolelli, Fabio Fognini, Stefano Galvani and Davide Sanguinetti -- nothing was found.
The Italian Federation's response was reported by AP: "The Italian Tennis Federation is drawing up new rules barring any betting by its players amid reports about irregular gambling patterns and possible match-fixing on the professional circuit, allegedly including some Italians. At the same time, the federation threatened legal action to protect the image of Italian tennis following what it called 'unfounded insinuations' against Italian players in the French media."
The same day, the Sunday Telegraph piece by Clive White reported the existence of the bookmakers' list (dossier) of irregular betting, which the paper said stood at 138 matches. This would prove to have a lot more traction.
The following week, BBC Radio Five Live (audio link) travelled down to Metz and interviewed several players in preparation for a feature aired last week. That's where Murray lit a fuse under the whole topic by saying, "Everyone knows it goes on."
Exactly what he meant by 'it' has since become contentious. The assumption was that he meant match-fixing, with some reports even going so far as to interpret his comment as 'it goes on all the time.' Since then, Murray has issued a statement saying he meant players being approached to throw matches, and then said in Madrid that he meant the amount of betting in tennis.
Listening to the audio of the feature, however, suggests that what he was really referring to is players not always giving their full effort in matches (match-fixing or otherwise):
"[Voiceover: "He says he can understand why some players would throw a match."] It doesn't really surprise me, you come to tournaments like this every single week and the first round losers cheque is €2,500 and you have to pay for your airfare. And it's only a 10-, 12-year career so you have to make all your money while you're still playing. But it's not really acceptable, and it's difficult to prove if someone's tanked a match or someone's not tried, because they can try their best till the last couple of games of each set, his a couple of double faults, and that's it. So it's pretty disappointing for all the players but you know, everyone knows it goes on."
It's a pretty extensive piece that includes serveral interviews -- journalists, bookmakers, a tournament director, Franzese, De Villiers and quite a few players (sample quotes):
Andreev: "I think for me tennis is clean sport. I never think any tennnis player could do something like this."
Canas: "I'm a little bit shocked... to cheat in the tennis is I think really bad for the sport. But I know they do it. I knew a few histories, I don't if it is true or not. I hope the ATP do something."
Grosjean: "No, never [approached]. Because maybe they know I'm against."
It's not clear how Murray's comments were represented to Rafael Nadal by Spanish reporters, but he struck back with: "I think he's gone overboard, I don't think anything like that happens...I'm the number two in the world, I've been in all the meetings, I see what goes on on the circuit just like him and I'm not so stupid as to not know what is going on... I doubt very much that he knows more than anyone else. I think that everyone gives it 100 percent and that there are no fixed games."
Federer told AP: "I'm surprised by all of these stories, shocked really that this might be happening. I've been around for the last 10 years and have never been approached or ever heard anything about it until these comments came out.
"Before I make any serious comments about this I'm going to speak with Andy. I'm going to speak with the federation and all the bodies so I can get a better idea of just what exactly is going on with this right now."
Davydenko, incredibly, had this to say: "If Murray says that he knows, that means that he gambles himself. Because people who start talking out loud have their fears disappear. And they know that if they speak out loud it means that they are free, they have not done it."
"Since Murray was describing in details how it all goes on, it means that he went deep into it. As if he was never involved in it, but he knows how it all works in details. It was folly of him to say this."
In other words, irrational accusations should arouse suspicion about the accuser? Hmm...
Mardy Fish told Matthew Cronin in tennisreporters.net: "I read Murray's quotes – that guys are getting approached or are tanking – and I've never thought that one time. You hear rumors of guys on tour in the past who are at tournaments, not playing in the tournament, but betting just because they want to watch a match, but not knowing whether someone will tank or going up to one of the players and saying, 'I'm going to give you this if you lose.' I've never seen that. You used to hear about it, but that's it. I've never been approached, I never heard of anyone who has been approached. You hate to see when someone like Murray says that. It's bad for the sport. I don't see it that way. I had a conversation with Leander Paes the other day and asked him if he ever heard it, and he said, 'I don't know where he gets it.' It's frustrating to see quotes like that. I think Andy is great kid but it doesn't make sense."
Murray, for his part, said in Moscow that he would talk to ATP officials in Madrid but would not "name any names."
Whatever Murray actually meant, the combination of his words and the publicizing of 'The List' ratcheted everything up yet another level. A Telegraph article by Mark Hodgkinson published descriptions of some of the suspected matches with the names removed. The Los Angeles Times published a story headlined "List of suspect matches heightens buzz."
Official Measures
So where does all this leave the sport's administrators? Clearly, all the incremental bits of evidence have become a pile too large to ignore. There's a small chance nothing is really going on, a tiny chance something pretty big is going on, and a pretty decent chance that there are some little stains around the edges. But the heat is now on to find out exactly which one of those three it really is.
The ATP, WTA, ITF and the Grand Slam committee met in London on Friday to discuss the creation of a combined integrity unit. After the meeting, they issued a statement: "While we do not believe that our sport has a corruption problem, we do recognise that a threat to the integrity of tennis exists," the game's authorities said in a joint statement. "We believe that an independent situation analysis of this risk is necessary and intend to utilise external expertise to assist us in conducting this analysis."
The next meeting is expected in Shanghai, with full-time experts expected to be hired for the unit. It's a positive move, but any credit given has to be balanced alongside the passive attitude that was taken until the Sopot match forced their hand. If Betfair hadn't drawn widespread attention to the issue by cancelling bets on the match, things would have continued to chug along as they were.
Though the ATP has usually been reactive rather than active on this problem, it has taken a few practical steps. In 2003, it quickly accepted Betfair's offer to sign a memorandum of understanding and has forged similar partnerships with 10 other betting firms. It maintained tough anti-gambling rules, including a minimum $100,000 fine and a lifetime ban for match-fixing (the current rules can be found in the rulebook on page 147). The WTA followed by instituting a minimum $100,000 and an unspecified period of ineligibility.
Betting analysis website Onthepunt.com also recalled: "Four or five years ago [probably January 2004], I was invited to an informal meeting with then ATP executive vice-president of rules and competition, Richard Ings (he now works for the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority). As we sat in a grandstand overlooking an ATP match in Adelaide, I explained to him what the betting industry were saying about the highly suspicious activity regarding his sport. He might have listened but I couldn't help but get the feeling that it was all too hard to deal with."
Between then and this summer, the ATP made enquiries about the odd suspicious match and tried to educate the players on the topic. After the Sopot match, investigators were appointed to look into the incident. From the Guardian:
Specialist investigators working under the guidance of the British Horseracing Authority will demand access to the online gambling accounts and telephone records of people they suspect of corruption following the recent Poland Open match between Nikolay Davydenko and Martin Vassallo Arguello. The ATP, men's tennis governing body, turned to the BHA's regulatory unit, led by the former Scotland Yard detective Paul Scotney, after suspicious betting patterns on the match led the betting exchange Betfair to nullify all wagers.
But all the comments coming from the governing bodies indicate that more than anything else, there was a desire to keep a distance from any potential problems.
In its story about the bookies' list of suspected matches, the Sunday Telegraph (above *) reported that only three were womens' matches. The discrepancy was explained by a WTA spokesperson thusly: "Women struggle to lose exhibition matches let alone real matches... I wouldn't say they're more competitive than men, it's just that they can't stand losing."
So no WTA player, despite on average earning much less than her ATP counterparts, would deign to lose one obscure match for $50,000 simply because she's a woman and hates losing? In fact, that might have been a clumsy way of giving the example that tanking is less common on the women's tour than the men's. Still, disengenuous-sounding comments like that hurt the WTA by suggesting that it can't even acknowledge the possibility of a problem, let alone tackle it if it emerges.
Not for the first time, the women's tour has been sheltered from an insidious threat simply because it operates on a smaller scale than the men's -- because less money can be made betting on women's matches, there's less incentive for corruption. But the pickings are easier -- hugely lopsided odds for the favourites are more common, players earn less, and there are more players under the control of dubious coaches -- so there's no reason to think the potential isn't there
Right on cue, reports then surfaced on the internet about a suspicious match between Tatiana Poutchek and Mariya Koryttseva in Calcutta. It was confirmed by the WTA in a story by Tom Tebbutt in the Globe and Mail:
A dubious shift in betting, and a total of $1.5-million wagered, during the quarter-final between Tatiana Poutchek of Belarus and Mariya Koryttseva of Ukraine two weeks ago in Calcutta sparked suspicion. "They [Betfair] suspended betting on the match but they did pay out," WTA Tour president Stacey Allaster said yesterday. "So it's very different than the Davydenko match. We were made aware by Betfair and provided with a report related to the match in question. We will investigate it but there is no reason to think there is any wrongdoing by the athlete, coach, sport-team member or anyone."
In a later ESPN story by Bonnie D. Ford, Allaster was quoted saying, "I don't think we really understood the scope of betting on our sport." It may have been an honest comment, but given that this isn't a new issue, it's not a comforting one.
WTA CEO Larry Scott managed to paint a different picture of his attitude in a Los Angeles Times story by Lisa Dillman (where the list was said to now contain 140 matches):
Separately, WTA chief executive Larry Scott told The Times on Friday that he knew of two matches on the women's tour this year that were marked by suspicious betting patterns and that one is considered closed. The other [Poutchek-Koryttseva]is pending. At least one of them is among the 140 listed. Scott said the two matches he cites helped convince him that serious steps are needed to protect the game's integrity.
To that end, Scott attended a meeting at Wimbledon and broached the subject with the heads of the Grand Slams, the four most prestigious events in tennis, and the president of the ITF, Francesco Ricci Bitti. Scott said he suggested the time had come for the sport's governing bodies to pool resources.
...Asked whether tennis had a gambling problem, he said, "No, I don't think so. Maybe I should only speak for women's tennis. I'm very confident women's tennis does not have a ser[i]ous problem."
There have been a few eyebrow-raising comments on the men's side too (and not all from De Villiers, either). The day of the Elseneer revelations, a Reuters had this reaction from the ATP:
The ATP said that if a player such as Elseneer, then ranked 191 in the world, could instantly decline the offer, it proved that the integrity of the sport was intact... "All the players who have said they've been approached have instantly said 'no'," the ATP spokesman said.
It could be either the reporter or the spokesperson making the leap, but either way -- the logic is laughable. Would any player who said 'yes' be likely to volunteer that information? Particularly with the threat of a liftime ban hanging in the air?
What's more, it's not the ATP the players have been telling. The ESPN article (above *) observed that "some players have kept silent for months or years after a shady incident, then unburdened themselves to journalists rather than tennis officials." It also got the ITF's reaction to Elseneer's story:
Bill Babcock, an International Tennis Federation executive director and administrator of the separate Grand Slam committee, conceded it was "frustrating" to read about Belgian player Gilles Elseneer's recent revelation that he was propositioned at Wimbledon in 2005. Babcock said he got in touch with Elseneer "right away."
"We need players to help us police the problem, and my first comment was that it would have been nice to hear this two years ago," Babcock said. But he added that he understands some players might be reluctant to come forward because they feel they will be stigmatized -- even if they did nothing wrong.
At the same time, Tommy Haas was wondering why officials were being inactive about letting players be approached. "You hear stories and you wonder why we aren't watching out for these guys at tournaments," Haas told Reuters. "There have been cases where it's quite obvious."
After all, why have the players told their stories to journalists and not to officials? Maybe because the journalists asked.
It looks like there may be a 'why don't the players do something?' - 'why doesn't the tour do something?' impasse between the pros and the ATP. If so, it needs to be broken by Shanghai, when a new rule will likely be proposed that requires players to report any approaches or illegal gambling activity they witness within 48 hours. For that to work, players will have to trust that the situation will be skilfully handled and not backfire on them.
It's interesting that so far no mention has been made of amnesty (or at least reduced punishment) for players who confess and co-operate in the cleanup. There is a provision for that in the anti-doping rules, where the penalty is only two years. For match-fixing, which carries a lifetime ban and is much harder for authorities to prove, it's logical to provide some security and incentive for guilty players to come forward.
But the tour does intend to try and at least make players being approached want to tell officials. From Christopher Clarey in the International Herald Tribune:
One concept that De Villiers intends to borrow from golf is that players are responsible for policing their game and their peers... "It's a change of culture," said De Villiers, who maintains his belief that match-fixing is not yet a problem in tennis. "We can't possibly stop athletes from being approached. We can't possibly have all of our 700 or 800 athletes with bodyguards. But what we can do is educate them on their responsibilities when they are approached and what the consequences of not behaving appropriately are."
Cultural change has not been restricted to the players. It bears remembering that as recently as last year, the ATP brain trust seriously considered accepting an Internet betting company as an official tour sponsor before thinking better of it.
Now that would have created some uncomfortable moments. The tour would have been forced to tread a delicate but predictable line -- saying the problem was match-fixing, not gambling per se.
It wouldn't have been entirely untrue, either. Sadly, the last couple of years have seen betting firms make almost more effort than the tours to foster hardcore fan growth in tennis -- providing free live streams of matches for users, sponsoring internet tennis communities, and encouraging interest in matchups and players rather than just top stars and big events.
But the fact that gambling raises the spectre of match-fixing -- not to mention that it's not exactly a wholesome activity in the first place -- is also enough to justify wishing for its disappearance.
That's hardly likely, however. The disclosures of the last few months have shaken up tennis, but will they hurt gambling on tennis? Don't bet on it -- if there's no such thing as bad publicity, it's been great exposure. Hands up those who know a lot more about how to wager on tennis than they did four months ago.
And since it's not going away, the sport has to deal with the threats it poses. At first glance, that's daunting. "I just don't see how the game of tennis can solve it, given the flourishing and diverse gambling industry, and the nature of the sport," observed Peter Bodo at TennisWorld. A bookmaker speaking to AP said today, "There will never be a foolproof system. Whatever rule you have in place, they'll find a way around it."
Fair enough. But while certainty is impossible, near certainty is achievable. The current problem appears to be one that could be spoofed with the headline "Players throwing matches no one cares about." As long as it stays that way, effective policing is possible. If it begins to creep into bigger matches at bigger tournaments, the larger money totals make it much harder to isolate irregular behaviour -- not to mention that the damage to the sport rises exponentially.
So how to contain the problem? There are two ends to manage. One is to keep the pool of corrupted players small -- if the pool is large, a group of players can create chains of fixed matches that penetrate into the later rounds of tournaments. Many of the current measures are aimed towards the players -- the hotline, the 48-hour rule, the 'change of culture' push. Preventing match-fixing ultimately comes down to the players' honesty -- the 'thin white line', as it were.
Independent steps are also being taken -- the Guardian noted that the UK government is establishing jail sentences for betting fraud in sports and the Australian Open has removed its on-site betting facility. The latter will remove the avenue for casual betting by people accredited at the tournament, but clearly it's not going to affect any corruption that might be taking place -- those types of bets would be placed online or at places away from the tournament site itself.
The second end at which the problem needs to be managed is the money end. Everything else about match-fixing may be easy to hide, but not the fact that someone will collect some serious cash. This is where the bookmakers and betting exchanges play a key role as alerters of suspicious activity. Closer co-operation makes it more difficult for suspect gamblers to get away unnoticed -- they need to use more accounts and operate in smaller amounts, -- which lowers the profitability of the enterprise. Once the profits get smaller, the incentive shrivels up and so does the activity.
At the same time, the tour has to have a sense of where its responsibility begins and ends. By far the biggest concern is preventing players from affecting the outcome of matches, making sure tour staff don't pass on inside information for betting purposes, and stopping would-be fixers from approaching players. A secondary concern is preventing coaches and other insiders from exploiting their access, which is probably best one by co-operating with bookmakers to track tournament and hotel IP addresses and letting the bookmakers match them up with betting accounts. Anything else -- like a spectator rushing to place a bet after seeing a player limping around the tournament grounds -- is really the bookmakers' concern alone. There's a limit to how wide the circle of control can be - the important thing is to have a firm grip on the centre (see bottom of this update).
Weird bets have always been around -- if memory serves correctly, someone once bet £80,000 on Cedric Pioline to win Wimbledon in 1994 (he reached the final in 1997 -- imagine how suspicious it would have looked that year); someone bet a house on Conchita Martinez to defend her Wimbledon title in 1995 ("I hope it was a small house," she said).
With the ability to now bet on very specific outcomes, things have only become wilder. According to Betfair, someone bet £184 on Marion Bartoli to win her semifinal against Justine Henin when she was a set and a break down -- for a nice haul of £23,736.What's more, that same afternoon, someone bet £6 on Richard Gasquet to win against Andy Roddick when down two sets and a break, ending up with £894 and many regrets about not putting down more. On the flip side, "an amazing £447,574 was matched on Henin at 1-100 (that is, punters were willing to risk £1,000 to win £10)... and Roddick, like Henin, was also backed at 1-100... 'It was probably the craziest hour in sports betting history.'"
The issue of information flow is a tricky one. Some would argue that a solution is have a comprehensive injury list, but that's impossible in an individual sport like tennis.The other extreme is to clamp down on information -- e.g. during the last scare a few years ago, trainers began refusing to tell courtside TV commentators what a player had been treated for. Yet that only places a greater premium on inside information and prevents normal operations. Again, the tours have to seriously think about when they're protecting the sport's and when they're just getting roped into protecting and overseeing the gambling industry.
Note to reporters: if players start getting the idea that they can't talk publicly about injuries or form, here's the rule which says in fact they can (ATP rulebook):
"No Player nor any of his Player Support Personnel shall, directly or indirectly, solicit, request, receive, accept or agree to receive or accept any money, benefit or other consideration (whether financial or otherwise) (collectively, “Consideration”), for the provision of any information concerning the weather, players, court conditions, status, outcome or any other aspect of any Event (other than the provision of information to a reputable media organization not affiliated with Wagering for disclosure to the general public).
Finally, the good news is that -- like the first time match-fixing suspicions emerged in 2003 -- the brief exposure to sunlight seems to have sent the problems scurrying away towards the corners. Apart from the Poutchek-Koryttseva match, there have been no reports of noticeably irregular betting since the Sopot incident. In the short term, at least, it appears that a scare is as good as a cure.
Magazines this Month
How Tennis Became Fun Again: Roger and Me - The New Republic
