Cellphones may be banned from tennis locker rooms to prevent the flow of inside information to gamblers.<\/b><\/p>\n
I was sitting in the food court at the ATP Los Angeles event this summer when I happened to speak to an older Asian gentleman. He told me that he knows the families of some Taiwanese tennis players and he used to go to the U.S. Open regularly. When one of the players he knew would lose her match at the Open and go home, he\u2019d take a press credential from someone in her entourage and he\u2019d use it to get access to the players lounge for the rest of the tournament.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d never get away with that today. In fact, this year the media were even banned from the locker room at the U.S. Open. Now it looks like cellphones could be next.<\/p>\n
The ITF<\/a>, the ATP<\/a> and the WTA<\/a> \u2013 the three governing bodies of professional tennis – are considering banning cellphones and handheld communication devices from players lounges and locker rooms. No more watching youtube videos on your iPhone while you wait for your tennis match to start. Players will now have to be satisfied with watching Novak Djokovic<\/b> do his imitation of Maria Sharapova<\/b> in person.<\/p>\n Why such draconian measures?<\/p>\n Ever since Betfair<\/a> voided all bets on a dodgy match between Nikolay Davydenko<\/b> and Martin Vassallo-Arguello<\/b> in early August, new information about betting on tennis matches has been tumbling out of players mouths. Most of the time they described an anonymous phone call offering money to influence the outcome of a match or a stranger walking up to them and offering money. But last week, Belgian player Gilles Elseneer<\/b> said that someone offered him $141,000 to throw his first round match at Wimbledon in 2005. That someone was not a stranger and it was not an anonymous phone call. It was a person who had access to the locker room.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know how banning cellphones will keep people out of the locker room but here\u2019s a situation it could help. Let\u2019s say Roger Federer<\/b> is getting ready to play Guillermo Canas<\/b> in the second round at Indian Wells. A person in the locker room sees that Federer\u2019s ankle is all messed up and he\u2019s getting treatment for it. That person flips open his cellphone and calls in a bet on Canas who is a huge underdog.<\/p>\n Maybe it was an Italian player who nipped out to the players lounge and used one of the laptops to lay down a bet on his internet betting account. An AP article<\/a> reported today that \u201cseveral Italian players had online betting accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s trading in insider information and that\u2019s a big no-no.<\/p>\n In that AP article, by the way, notice that mainstream media finally caught up with the irregular betting pattern on the Poutchek\/Koryttseva<\/a> match a week after we first reported it here.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t just the players who are talking. British newspaper The Telegraph<\/a> turned up a dossier compiled by a bookmaker that recorded suspicious betting patterns in 138 tennis matches dating back to 2003. No doubt many of those matches were not irregular but that still averages out to over 27 matches a year.<\/p>\n