Tuesday, October 30
Last updated at 8:40 pm EDT
BRITISH PRESS
Murray brothers team up in Paris but only as a short-term fix - Neil Harman, The Times
Jamie is as eager to play as his sibling, having arrived for the BNP Paribas Masters on Friday, finding the place so free of hitting partners that he practised with his mother, Judy. The brotherly combination here is a stop-gap arrangement as Jamie continues to see who he can tempt to join him for the 2008 campaign and beyond.Leander Paes, of India, had been his first choice, but that arrangement was scuppered and he then approached Kevin Ullyett, of Zimbabwe, who has agreed to join him until Jonas Björkman, the veteran Swede, returns to the tour for a final year after the birth of his second child, which is due in January.
...As for the wisdom of playing doubles here in such a potentially momentous week, Andy said yesterday: “I told Jamie last week I’d play and with the new rules [there are no advantage points and no deciding third set on the ATP Tour], it will be good for me because I’ll get a feel for the court and what it’s like, which will help me going into my singles.”
Andy Murray's late surge towards qualification for the end-of-season Tennis Masters Cup, restricted to the world's leading eight players, was given added impetus yesterday with suggestions coming out of the United States that Andy Roddick, the world No 5, will not play in Shanghai. Roddick is due to spearhead his country's attempt to win the Davis Cup for the first time since 1995 when they meet Russia in Portland, Oregon, less than two weeks after the cup.
AMERICAN PRESS
Davydenko probably tanked at this tournament last year, too. He won the first set against Wesley Moodie, then ranked no. 135 in the world, and was tied at 3–3 in the second set when he retired with a foot injury. He won in Paris the next week on the same foot....Put simply, Davydenko is a marked man, and that's why he was made to suffer last week. But it doesn't do tennis any good to embarrass him for behavior that almost everyone else in the game has shown from time to time. The fine won't send a message to other players and it doesn't signify some new resolve on the part of umpires. Most unfortunate of all, it brings more attention to a seemingly minor gambling problem — yes, minor — that currently afflicts tennis.
Florida's Mardy Fish thumped 43 aces against diminutive Belgian Olivier Rochus in the second round in Lyon, France, last week and still lost 6-7, 7-6, 7-6. The 5-foot-5 Rochus, not having a good year by his standards, took the final-set tiebreaker 17-15. Fish's 43 aces were one shy of the three-set record set by Aussie Mark Philippoussis 12 years ago. The overall record is 51, shared by Croat Ivo Karlovic and Swede Joachim Johansson. Guess what? They both lost, too.
AUSTRALIAN PRESS
INTERNATIONAL PRESS
Out of the fallow fields of fall tennis has emerged a giant to add life to the humdrum of year-end indoor tournaments. Ivo Karlovic, 6 foot 10, is the tallest player in the history of the ATP Tour, and, of late, he is showing he has evolved from curiosity to contender... "My parents didn't have a lot of money," he said of his childhood. "In the evening, when the courts were empty, I would serve for hours."...After back-to-back weeks in Madrid and Basel and locking up the No. 1 ranking for the fourth year in a row by winning in Basel yesterday, many observers expected Federer to skip Paris, as he did a year ago in similar circumstances. This year, there's a catch. He gets a $1.5-million bonus for finishing No. 1, but only if he plays eight of the nine Masters Series, which he has, and both Madrid and Paris. Despite appearing weary and lethargic at times in Basel, it appears the thought of losing $1.5-million is enough to get him to Paris to hit a few forehands and backhands.
The other good news is that as of 2009, the Bell Challenge will be moved from its current slot to one week after the U.S. Open.
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Sebastien Grosjean
Resurgent Frenchman beats Marc Gicquel to take the Lyon, France, event. Then doubles his pleasure with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and takes doubles crown.Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
Cassius Clay takes out Richie Gasquet in Lyon and teams with Grosjean to win doubles.
Is this going to be the not-so-long-awaited breakthrough for Argentine teenager Juan Martin Del Potro? He’s won two qualifying matches and beaten Feliciano Lopez in the first round. He’s also in the same section as Tommy Robredo, whom he beat two weeks ago in Madrid, and Nikolay Davydenko, who must be getting a little distracted by now (he was fined for “not trying” last week in St. Petersburg). Otherwise, the seeds here are Ivan Ljubicic, who has had a bad year and dropped to No. 15, and Guillermo Cañas. Del Potro couldn’t follow up his win over Robredo, so I’m not ready to say he’s going to go the distance here. Maybe there’s room for Marcos Baghdatis, who made the semis in Basel and who owns a 3-1 record against Ljubicic, to slip by.Wires
"It happened to me but I will not tell you where or how," Clement told reporters after his first-round defeat by Russia's Mikhail Youzhny at the Paris Masters Series tournament. "I didn't hesitate for a second, I said no," added the 29-year-old, who was runner-up at the 2001 Australian Open and is now ranked 53rd in the world... "It's very serious. I can't imagine that a top 10 player could accept that but it's hard to imagine as well that guys go to tournaments to make such offers. I haven't heard many players say it happened to them."..."It is a dreadful disease which is a threat for tennis worldwide," Bimes added. "We have to act straight away and be as severe with this as we are with doping."
Betting on matches at the Paris event was being watched for anything suspicious, said FFT general director Jean-Francois Vilotte. Matches were also being recorded and analysed by former players and ATP supervisors while players were banned from betting at the venue, he added. "We have contacted police," Vilotte said. "If we were to trace a suspicious amount of money placed on one match and to notice anything irregular during that match, we would hand over the information to police and they would launch an official investigation."
"Roland Garros will not lose its grand slam status but I'm convinced that if we don't make progress, there will one day be a fifth grand slam event in Asia and possibly a sixth in Europe," Bimes said.
"The losers would be the French Open and Wimbledon. We want to avoid that at any cost."
Tursunov ended up reaching the final at the tournament, but he trailed 6-4, 2-0 in the second round before advancing 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Despite the second-set deficit, there was still money being put on Tursunov to win."We investigate, as a matter of course, those markets that we have potential issues with,'' Betfair spokesman Adrian Murdock said Monday.
Murdock said the investigation revealed that a specific bettor known to the company continued to back the Russian Tursunov. The Serb Pashanski is ranked 84th, and Tursunov is ranked 29th. Betfair eventually settled all bets, in part because the unnamed bettor loses more than he wins. "This guy is a net loser on tennis,'' Murdock said. "He's such a high volume bettor that it skewed the market a bit.''
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