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 will be next. Why such draconian measures?<\/p>\n Ever since Betfair 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 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.<\/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 first round(?) at Indian Wells. Someone in the locker room sees that Federer\u2019s ankle is all messed up and he\u2019s getting treatment for it. The player 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 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
\nThe ITF, the ATP<\/a> and the