ESPN has reported that the ATP had evidence of match fixing before the Davydenko match and the French Open wants gambling to just go away.

I bought a used car while I was staying in Santa Fe one summer. I had the car checked out before I bought it and the repair shop told me that the timing belt needed to be replaced. I’m only using the car for the summer, I thought to myself, the belt should be o.k. for a few months.One night, my friend Margaret and I drove to Albuquerque for the weekend. We’d just taken a left exit from route I-25 and we were entering the fast lane on route I-40 – one of the busiest interstate interchanges in the country – when the timing belt broke and the car rolled to a stop.

Here we were, precariously lodged on the edge of a highway while cars bore down on us as they ramped up their speed to enter the fast lane of the upcoming highway and all we had was a puny flashlight to wave at oncoming traffic. We were lucky no one ran us down and even luckier that nobody else died as they swerved their car to avoid us

This past week, ESPN reported the results of four months research into the Nikolay Davydenko/Martin Vassallo-Arguello match at Sopot in August of last year. All bets on the match at Betfair, an online gambling site, were voided because the betting pattern looked like the match had been fixed. ESPN’s research shows that the ATP had evidence of match fixing before the Davydenko match and didn’t do anything about it. That’s what happens when don’t take care of a problem even though you’re aware of it. It blows up in your face.

According to ESPN, Richard Ings, the ATP’s vice president of rules and competition, had evidence of a suspicious relationship between a big time gambler and an ATP player in 2005. The gambler was an Austrian named Martin Führer, and the player was Irakli Labadze who is from Georgia. Führer had befriended Labadze by hanging around ATP tournaments and he was making a lot of money from matches that Labadze lost. It got to the point where bookmakers refused to take bets from Führer.

Interestingly, the ATP fined Labadze $7500 for lack of effort in one of those matches. It was a foreshadowing of the $2,000 fine Davydenko received for lack of effort at the St. Petersburg Open last year. Davydenko successfully appealed the fine.

Ings was the guy who set up an agreement with Betfair to notify the ATP whenever they found an irregular betting pattern. He also had access to Betfair’s database and he used it to research Führer’s bets. However, Ings left the ATP a few months later and the ATP never followed up on his findings.

To be fair, match fixing is not easy to prove. ATP CEO Etienne de Villiers said as much to ESPN about the Davydenko match: “We may never know. We may get to the point where we think we know but we can’t prove it.” The match had an irregular betting pattern and the ATP knows who laid the biggest bets on the match, but that doesn’t prove it was fixed. For that you need evidence that gamblers asked Davydenko to throw the match.

Dealing with match fixing is not easy but the next step tennis has taken to deal with the problem of gambling is rather pathetic. The organizers of the French Open have filed an injunction against Betfair, Bwin and Ladbrokes, three online gambling sites, to stop them from taking bets on the event.

The injunction states that gambling companies are tainting the reputation of the French Open and using the tournament to make money. The organizers sound like a 5 year old refusing to eat spinach: “I hate spinach. Make it go away!”

Here is the problem with the complaints in the injunction.

Gambling sites may indirectly be tainting the French Open’s reputation by taking bets from gamblers who are fixing matches, but match fixing has been going on in all sports for all time. I’ve no doubt someone rubbed down a wrestler with grease at the ancient Greek Olympics then ran off to the local bookie and laid a bet on the guy.

Gambling on the French Open won’t stop unless you make all sports gambling illegal and even then, it won’t stop, it’ll just be forced underground. In that case, you might not notice irregular betting patterns and it might be much harder to find the gamblers who laid the bets whereas online gambling sites give you that information in real time.

Here’s the problem with the complaint that gamblers are making money off the French Open. The result of a sporting event is a news item. There’s nothing proprietary about a news item. I can lay a bet that Britney Spears will be back in a mental ward within six months – hey, I should take that bet – and Britney can’t do anything about.

This issue has already been addressed by the U.S. judicial systems in the case of CDM Sports versus Major League Baseball Advanced Media. MLBAM was charging a licensing fee to fantasy baseball sites to use its players’ statistics but you can find statistics in the box scores in any newspaper No one pays for them.

Laws in Europe may differ but I doubt it. You can’t charge someone for information that everyone gets for free and you can’t prevent newspapers from printing the outcome of a sporting event.

Professional tennis has worked closely with the British Horseracing Authority in the aftermath of the Davydenko match. I don’t see the BHA filing injunctions and clearing gamblers out of racing tracks. Other sports have had gambling controversies and match fixing. That’s how it is.

Tennis needs to make up for lost time and handle gambling the same way horseracing and soccer handle it. That starts by accepting gambling instead of avoiding it or wishing it away.

Earlier this week I argued that Davis Cup should switch their format to a yearly two week event instead of a series of four home and away matches throughout the year. Then I got to thinking…

What makes Davis Cup special? Answer: unruly crowds, bad calls and extreme surfaces. Take the Davis Cup tie between the U.S. and Austria this weekend as an example. The Austrians dumped a bunch of red clay on the floor of a velodrome a few days before the event started and called it a clay court even though it had a bald spot a few feet inside the baseline – you could see through to the surface below.

See that Andy Roddick Powerade commercial above? That shot is fake. There’s no way Roddick could impale the ball into the court unless he stuffed a tennis ball in a bazooka gun and shot it straight down at the court. He might come close on the Austrian court though. It was that loose and soft.

All the better for Roddick’s opponent, Jurgen Melzer, to hit his funky two handed backhand drop shot. Time and again he hit the ball deep then followed that up with a drop shot then followed that up with a passing shot. Each time Roddick had to run a for a drop shot he looked like one of those cartoon characters whose feet are spinning like crazy but going nowhere.

Late in the second set, the ball took a bad bounce and flew way over Roddick’s racket. In the fourth set, a Melzer serve skidded underneath Roddick’s racket. Did they mix some pebbles in with the clay or just forget to smooth it out.

Roddick essentially skips the clay court season each year yet he bangs out long clay court victories in Davis Cup and he did it again today. He beat Melzer in five sets, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-3, because he won the big points. He refused to lose.

Melzer was serving to stay in the first set and had Roddick on the run when he hit an average approach shot. Roddick passed him to get a set point and one point later won the first set. Roddick ran down just enough balls for Melzer to make a mistake.

Would Roddick play with so much pride if Davis Cup was a two week tournament? Doesn’t a lot of his pride come from playing in front of a hostile crowd in his opponent’s country or in front of his home crowd?

And one more thing, if Davis Cup becomes a two week tournament, how would it be different from Hopman Cup or the team event at Dusseldorf except in length? Davis Cup would be yet another tournament competing with other tournaments for players.
I stand corrected. Leave Davis Cup alone. This is too much fun.

James Blake had much less trouble with Stefan Koubek. He beat him rather easily in four sets, 5-7, 7-5, 6-2, 6-2. Bob and Mike Bryan beat Julian Knowle and Melzer, 6-1, 6-4, 6-2, in Saturday’s doubles match and so the U.S. passes through to the quarterfinals where they’ll play France.

There weren’t any bad line calls and the home crowd wasn’t totally out of control though they did annoy Roddick. Maybe I’ll get my unruly crowds and bad line calls in the next round.

It’s time for Davis Cup again but does anyone really care? Here’s what’s wrong and a suggestion for fixing it.

Okay, So What’s Wrong With Davis Cup?

Which would you rather win: a slam title or Davis Cup? Duh.

What’s the prize money for a slam title? Oh, about $1.4 million. And a whole lot more if you win the U.S. Open title and the U.S. Open Series.

What’s the prize money for a Davis Cup title? Much less.

How many ranking points do you win for a slam title? 1000

How many ranking points do you win for a Davis Cup? 0

It’s not quite as simple as that but it’s close. Look at this week for instance. Great Britain is playing its Davis Cup tie in Argentina this coming weekend but Andy Murray won’t be there. He says his knee is injured and it could be.

But Murray is also not wild about slogging through two five set matches on clay in Argentina then flying back and, one week later, playing Rotterdam on a fast indoor surface when he has big points to defend. Murray won the San Jose Open last year and though he’s playing in Rotterdam this year instead, the points still come off that week.

By the way, the Rotterdam/San Jose switcharoo has appearance fees written all over it and that’s unfortunate. San Jose will not get its defending champion because Rotterdam may have waved a bigger pile of money at Murray than San Jose did. If San Jose waved money too, they can hardly complain, but tennis fans should complain.

Back to Davis Cup. The point is that you don’t get any ATP points for Davis Cup, it’s unlikely that Davis Cup payouts can compete with appearance fees plus tournament prize money, and you might be playing on clay in the middle of the spring indoor season which increases the chance of injury. Great Britain can’t really complain about Murray’s decision. Does Great Britain want to win a Davis Cup or do they want Murray to win a few slams including, oh yes please, a Wimbledon or two?

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal agree with Murray. They’re not playing this week and David Ferrer has pulled out too. Andy Roddick is unusual in this day and age for his steadfast commitment to Davis Cup but, then, he’s seldom in the hunt for slam titles these days.

How to Fix Davis Cup

Here are two suggestions under discussion:

1. Give players ATP ranking points for playing a Davis Cup tie.
2. Schedule a yearly two-week Davis Cup event after the U.S. Open.

Players skip Davis Cup to prepare for tournaments that give them ranking points. Giving them ATP ranking points for Davis Cup play would address that problem but how would we do it?

As Bob Larson points out, why should James Blake get ATP points for beating one of Chile’s second rate players in the meaningless fifth match of a Davis Cup tie? And what about someone like Sam Querrey? He won’t get any of those points until he overtakes Roddick and Blake to get a place on the U.S. team and that could be three or four years from now.

Nope, that suggestion won’t work so let’s go with the second suggestion. It’s time for Davis Cup organizers to step out of the past and into the present world of sports marketing. In today’s world we have the Olympics and the World Cup and the Super Bowl. We already know that the 2012 Olympics will be held in London and the 2008 Olympics haven’t even started yet.

We don’t know where the Davis Cup final will be until the semifinals are complete because the final is held in the home country of one of the participating teams. That means we had about one month’s notice for the 2007 final in Portland, Oregon.

I love Portland, Oregon. I just spent 10 days there hanging out at such wonderful restaurants as Paleys where I ate an appetizer of escargots with bone marrow and some basil garlic bread soaked in bordelaise sauce. No lie. But you can’t build up excitement for an event with one month’s notice.

Create a yearly two-week event and change the surface from year to year. Solicit bids for the event from countries around the world and give them time to promote it. Davis Cup will change fundamentally because the home country won’t be able to choose its favorite surface – or its opponent’s most hated surface – and teams won’t be cheered on by their home crowd.

But it wouldn’t be the first fundamental change. Until 1981, Davis Cup didn’t give out prize money. Prize money was a break from Davis Cup’s amateur past and now it’s time for another.

What do you think? Would Davis Cup gain in prestige or would it become just another tournament?

Andy Murray and his crew play tennis footy at the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton, England.

Jennifer Capriati fights off a match point in the second set tiebreaker against Martina Hingis before going on to win the 2002 Australian Open title.