Monthly Archives: October 2007

Cellphones to be banned in tennis locker rooms

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’d take a press credential from someone in her entourage and he’d use it to get access to the players lounge for the rest of the tournament.

He’d 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 will be next.
The ITF, the ATP and the WTA – the three governing bodies of professional tennis – are planning to ban cellphones and handheld communication devices from players lounges and locker rooms. No more watching youtube videos on your iphone or calling up mum or laying bets while you wait for your tennis match to start. Players will now have to be satisfied with watching Novak Djokovic do his imitation of Maria Sharapova in person.

Why such draconian measures?

Ever since Betfair voided all bets on a dodgy match between Nikolay Davydenko and Martin Vassallo-Arguello 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 said 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 person who had access to the locker room.

I don’t know how banning cellphones will keep people out of the locker room but here’s a situation it could help. Let’s say Roger Federer is getting ready to play Guillermo Canas in the first round(?) at Indian Wells. Someone in the locker room sees that Federer’s ankle is all messed up and he’s getting treatment for it. The player flips open his cellphone and calls in a bet on Canas who is a huge underdog.

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 reported today that “several Italian players had online betting accounts.”

That’s trading in insider information and that’s a big no-no.

It isn’t just the players who are talking. British newspaper The Telegraph 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.

It’s a bit like the steroid controversy if you think about it. It’s been going on for years but no one has been talking about it. The Balco scandal broke open the steroid scandal in baseball and track and field. Gambling in tennis was broken open by a highly suspicious betting pattern on Betfair – an online betting exchange – during the Davydenko/Vassallo-Arguello match. If you’re using an online betting exchange, you can see the betting pattern right there on your laptop.

Is banning cellphones a draconian move? I’m not sure it’s draconian as much as ineffective. Unless tournaments ban cellphones from the entire tournament site, what’s to stop someone from stepping out of the locker room and making a phone call?

It would be more effective to require transparency for injuries. Any time a player gets treated for an injury, that information should be public knowledge. Players might run offsite to get treatment to avoid tipping off their condition to an opponent but that’s a lot harder than stepping outside the locker room and making a phone call.
It also shows you a problem with banning the media from the locker room: it’s easier for players to hide injuries.

Speaking of those online betting exchanges, sometimes it’s the betters themselves who alert the site to suspic/ should require timely and public disclosure of injuries and find out who’s laying the bets that drive suspicious betting patterns. They should try to avoid adding yet another security procedure to the many that we all have to endure as it is.

Pro Tennis Players Could Lose Their Cellphones

Cellphones may be banned from tennis locker rooms to prevent the flow of inside information to gamblers.

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’d take a press credential from someone in her entourage and he’d use it to get access to the players lounge for the rest of the tournament.

He’d 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.

The ITF, the ATP and the WTA – 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 do his imitation of Maria Sharapova in person.

Why such draconian measures?

Ever since Betfair voided all bets on a dodgy match between Nikolay Davydenko and Martin Vassallo-Arguello 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 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.

I don’t know how banning cellphones will keep people out of the locker room but here’s a situation it could help. Let’s say Roger Federer is getting ready to play Guillermo Canas in the second round at Indian Wells. A person in the locker room sees that Federer’s ankle is all messed up and he’s getting treatment for it. That person flips open his cellphone and calls in a bet on Canas who is a huge underdog.

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 reported today that “several Italian players had online betting accounts.”

That’s trading in insider information and that’s a big no-no.

In that AP article, by the way, notice that mainstream media finally caught up with the irregular betting pattern on the Poutchek/Koryttseva match a week after we first reported it here.

It isn’t just the players who are talking. British newspaper The Telegraph 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.

It’s a bit like the steroid controversy if you think about it. It’s been going on for years but no one has been talking about it. The Balco scandal broke open the steroid scandal in baseball and track and field. Gambling in tennis was broken open by that highly suspicious betting pattern on Betfair – an online betting exchange – during the Davydenko/Vassallo-Arguello match. If you’re using an online betting exchange, you can see the betting pattern right there on your laptop.

Is banning cellphones a draconian move? I’m not sure it’s draconian as much as ineffective. Unless tournaments ban cellphones from the entire tournament site, what’s to stop someone from stepping out of the locker room and making a phone call?

It would be more effective to require transparency for injuries. Any time a player gets treated for an injury, that information should be public knowledge. Players might run offsite to get treatment to avoid tipping off their condition to an opponent but that’s a lot harder than stepping outside the locker room and making a phone call.

It also shows you a problem with banning the media from locker rooms: it’s easier for players to hide injuries.

Speaking of those online betting exchanges, sometimes it’s the betters themselves who alert betting sites to suspicious matches. It doesn’t take an Einstein to detect an irregular betting pattern.

Tennis’ organizing bodies should require timely and public disclosure of injuries and find out who’s laying the bets that drive irregualr betting patterns. They should avoid adding yet another security procedure to the many we already endure.

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Why Does Nadal Play Well at Wimbledon but not the U.S. Open?

If Rafael Nadal can get to the final at Wimbledon, why can’t he get past the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open?

Bjorn Borg won six French Opens and five Wimbledons. Three times he won them back to back. That’s an incredible record because not only is clay the slowest surface and grass the fastest, but he won Wimbledon without ever playing a tuneup grass court tournament.

If Borg won multiple slams on the fastest surface and the slowest surface, how come he never won the U.S. Open? I always tried to figure this out by looking at his skill set. What did he do well on grass that he couldn’t do well on hard court? It wasn’t his skill set. I was looking in the wrong place for my answer.

Rafael Nadal has won three French Opens and reached the Wimbledon final twice, yet he’s only reached the quarterfinals once at the U.S. Open. The problem is not his skill set either, it’s his body.

Nadal is a grinder, possibly the most sublime grinder who ever lived, but a grinder nonetheless. His favorite surface is clay and his favorite strategy is keeping the ball in play. He sets himself up miles behind the baseline and runs down impossible balls with regularity. He can also turn a defensive play into a winner better than any other player on the ATP, but the grinding takes its toll.

Clay is a soft, forgiving surface. It lets you slide into your approach to the ball. Grass is soft too if you compare it to hard court. It’s dirt with grass growing on it, not cement. And there’s less friction. The ball skids on grass. Hard court is sticky and, um, hard.

Nadal’s knees hurt when he plays too much on hard court and it’s getting worse as his career goes along. Three hour matches of stopping and starting on a sticky surface takes its toll. He had tendonitis coming into the U.S. Open this year and it was painful to see him hobble off the court after David Ferrer ran him out of the Open in the fourth round.

Nadal has two Masters titles on outdoor hard court and one on indoor hard court so it’s not like he can’t play on the surface. It’s just that his body can’t hold up to his style of play on the unforgiving cement.

What was Borg’s problem? He didn’t like playing at the U.S. Open and he particularly hated night matches there. That didn’t stop the Open organizers from scheduling him at night because he was a huge draw.

If Borg had the excuse that he didn’t like playing the U.S. Open, it’s only an excuse if he played well on outdoor hard courts elsewhere. He did. He played 25 outdoor hard court events in his career and won seven of them while reaching the final in five more, including three finals at the U.S. Open. That means he won the title or reached the final at almost half those events.

Interesting that Borg only played 25 hard court events in his eleven year professional career. That’s less than three hard court tournaments a year. John McEnroe, during roughly the same era, played over five hard court tournaments a year. I would guess that’s a combination of two things: Borg preferred clay courts and he lived in Europe where clay courts are more popular. McEnroe lived in the U.S. where it’s hard to find anything other than a hard court.

I’d be a grinder too if I could keep the ball in the court. And I’d be much happier if the U.S. had many more clay courts. That way we’d see much more of Rafael Nadal on this side of the ocean.

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Will Video Tennis Overtake the Hard Court Version?

Tennis joined the world of popular video games with Wii tennis and Prince has joined in by making a Wii tennis racket.

I was watching football on TV yesterday when an ad came on. The camera panned a diorama of toy soldiers engaged in a horrific battle. Fireballs were frozen in mid-explosion. Soldiers sat stunned on the sideline. Frozen smoke billowed out of firearms. I thought the Democratic Party had kicked off its 2008 presidential campaign with an anti-Iraq war ad but, no, it was an ad for the video game Halo 3.

There’s even a “making of” documentary for the Halo diorama which is dedicated to the hero of the battle, Master Chief Petty Officer John 117.

Video games are so pervasive I’m having trouble distinguishing them from political ads. I haven’t even bought an XBox 360 yet and Halo is already making mockumentaries about its heroes.

Life in tennis is much simpler. We’ve never had a good video game – unless you count pong – and those that did exist were never popular enough to generate interest from manufacturers of tennis gear.

That has now changed on both accounts.

Ninetendo’s Wii video game has become wildly popular and today, Prince Sports announced the release of tennis rackets for Wii tennis. To play Wii tennis, you swing the Wii controller as if it were a tennis racket and hit the ball coming at you on the screen. Wii Tennis has a generic white controller but now you can play with a hot pink Prince racket.

To see Wii tennis in action, start up Tennis Diary TV on the right side of this page, click on the Channel Guide and watch Wii Tennis Anyone?

In its press release, Prince says the following:

Playing Wii Tennis has led to competitions at local bars, Wii Tennis as part of school PE curriculums, and the first ever “Wimbledon” tournament held earlier this year.

Really, it’s part of the physical education curriculum at schools? For sure it’s a lot cheaper to play Wii Tennis than build a tennis court but wouldn’t our youth be better served if they ran around a playground or played kickball?

That Wii “Wimbledon” tournament took place at the Brooklyn tavern Barcade in June. About 600 people wanted to play in the tournament but there was only space for 128. I ask you, when was the last time a “real” tennis tournament turned away 472 players?

All of which leads me to wonder: How many years will it take till tennis video has more players than the real version? Ten years? Twenty years? Thirty years? Never? Cast your vote in the poll to the right.

I’d like to think the answer is never but it’s a whole lot easier to stand in your living room and wave a tiny racket around than it is to go out on a tennis court and figure out how to hit an overhead without swinging and totally missing.

We like instant gratification when we can get it and tennis is a difficult sport to learn. Most professional athletes grew up playing a variety of sports but young tennis players are encouraged to start at around seven or eight years of age and focus solely on tennis.

The Wii tennis game is in its infancy at the moment. You don’t even control your player’s movement, only the act of hitting the ball. With newer versions that should change and I’m pretty sure you’ll also be able to play as Roger Federer or choose Ana Ivanovic as your luscious onscreen avatar.

Meanwhile, go outside and play tennis on a tennis court while you still can.

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