I’m here at the Acura Classic watching Maria Sharapova annihilate Sania Mirza. This is the last year for the Acura Classic and the last Tier 1 tournament on the U.S.  West Coast, so I was a bit amused to learn that there is a gambling controversy in the ATP – the men’s side of the tour. Someone actually thinks tennis is popular enough to plunk down a whole lot of money on it.

Gamblers on Betfair.com a British online gambling site, bet over $7 million that Nikolay Davydenko would lose his second round match to Martin Vassallo-Arguello in Sopot, Poland. That’s not so unusual, except that most of the bets were made after Davydenko won the first set 6-2. Davydenko ended up losing the second set and retired in the third set with a foot injury.

And it gets more intriguing as Betfair have since announced that all bets are now void and all money will be reimbursed. As far as I know, this move is unprecedented by a big bookmaking company. The ATP will also be questioning Davydenko about his injury.

'Someone actually thinks tennis is popular enough to plunk down a whole lot of money on it'


If you look closer, the situation looks even more curious. Davydenko got to the semi-finals at the French Open and he’s a top-five player, yet he’d lost in the first round in his previous three tournaments, all of them clay court events.

The ATP is not like the National Football League (NFL) where teams are required to disclose a player’s injury status. The NFL has such rules so other teams can prepare properly for an upcoming game. But those rules are also an unspoken nod to the huge gambling activity on NFL games. Gamblers would be extremely angry if the star quarterback turned up on the sideline after they’d wagered a pretty penny.

However, there’s not much here. Davydenko also lost his first match at three consecutive clay court events last year - Valencia, Monte Carlo and Barcelona.

While we don’t know if Davydenko was injured during that time or not, we do know he’d play even if his foot was falling off. He’s notorious for playing the most tournaments of any of the top players. Last year the captain of the Russian Davis Cup team sat him down because he went all the way to China for a tournament after playing the U.S. Open and he was too exhausted to play when he arrived in Moscow.

I don’t think people suspect Davydenko of throwing the match for the same reason we don’t think NBA players throw games: they make too much money. Tim Donaghy, the NBA referee who is accused of influencing NBA games, made around $280,000 a year. Davydenko has made almost $1 million already this year and over $6 million in his career.

It’s possible that he’s gambled away his fortune and his lenders are putting the squeeze on him. A mobster from Uzbekistan named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov was accused of trying to fix ice skating events at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, and Russian tennis players were known to hang out with him. But Davydenko moved to Germany when he was 15. His ATP profile says he moved back to Russia in 2004 but I understand that he continues to live in Germany and he’s trying to move to Austria because Germany would not give him residence.

Maybe the Germans uncovered a gambling habit, who knows? There are a lot of things we don’t know at the moment but there is one thing we do know. The world of sports benefits when gambling is legal and controlled. Internet gambling is legal in Britain and Betfair has an agreement with the ATP to report irregular betting activity. If sports gambling had been legal in the US, the NBA may have been unable to uncover Tim Donaghy’s activities earlier than it did.

In fact, Betfair got an award from Queen Elizabeth for being an innovative enterprise. Can you image the President of the U.S. giving a gambling operation an award of any kind?

I’m in the process of getting an interview with a Betfair user who bets on tennis. When I get more information, I’ll pass it along. Meanwhile, the ATP could help us all by acknowledging the influence of gambling and instituting rules requiring players to disclose injuries.

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