Its no secret that match-fixing is prevelant in tennis, albeit at the lower Challenger and ITF circuits.
There have been numerous reports in the popular media about players under investigation for throwing matches but nothing ever gets done about it because its so hard to prove! One of the reasons match-fixing in tennis is so easy to do and so difficult to prove is that it is a single person sport. With team sports like football (soccer), cricket, baseball et cetera, you need to have at least a few members of the team/managers in the know and hence its harder to conceal.
With tennis, how can anyone prove that a player leading 5-0 and serving for the match threw the game? He or she can simply claim it was an attack of nerves or a spirited fight-back from his/her opponent or an injury.
Of course, I've used an extreme example but over the past 10 years I've seen my fair share of tennis matches and in some of them it seems like the player is hardly bothered to win a point and is just going through the motions. I'm not saying this indicates a match has been fixed but surely as a professional you'd expect a player to try harder?
I've played squash on a semi-professional level in the UK (which is where I live) and have played tennis recreationally so its not like I'm ignorant of what goes on during a match on a mental and physical level. Which is why it seems so hard to believe when I see players lose from seemingly impregnable positions or lose to someone ranked 200 places below them.
Using myself as an example in 12 years of playing squash I've lost just twice to players ranked below me in the country. Granted we are talking on an amateur/semi-professional level but if I wanted to win every game no matter what surely a professional sports person, in this case a tennis player should want to win even more?
And these people have fitness regimes they follow, nutritional plans in place, coaches, trainers, training facilities et cetra and they still lose to over-the-hill, 200something ranked players? How?
Just this morning, I was on a uk-based betting forum and a poster had posted about a match fix with odds of around 25-1. That poster was immediately banned by the forum moderators but for some reason his post with his email address is still up.
Now no doubt, this was a mere scamster trying his luck but in the not-too-distant past I've been told about match-fixes and urged to bet on them by a Romanian guy I made friends with at my local bookies.
Sorry for this long post but I'm just having a little rant whilst waiting for the US matches to start
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