{"id":728,"date":"2007-11-09T12:24:15","date_gmt":"2007-11-09T20:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=728"},"modified":"2007-11-09T12:24:15","modified_gmt":"2007-11-09T20:24:15","slug":"celebrity-tennis-gambling-blow-and-poison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/celebrity-tennis-gambling-blow-and-poison\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrity Tennis: Gambling, Blow, and Poison"},"content":{"rendered":"

Join us for the WTA Championships final! We\u2019ll be blogging live this Sunday, November 11th, 2:00pm Los Angeles\/5pm New York.<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

Gambling, cocaine and poison provide more than enough content for a celebrity tennis show.<\/b><\/p>\n

If Jim Rome<\/a> is talking about tennis, then tennis is definitely cool again. Rome is the spoken word king of daily sports radio in the U.S. and he talks about tennis about as often as he talks about the ballet.<\/p>\n

Why was he talking about tennis? How about this: Tommy Haas<\/b> believes he may have been poisoned during Germany\u2019s Davis Cup semifinal against Russia in Moscow earlier this year. German Davis Cup player Alexander Waske<\/b> reported that a Russian man casually told him that Haas had been poisoned.<\/p>\n

Haas became sick after losing his first match in the event and had to withdraw. He plans to get medical tests to see if there is any evidence of poison in his system: \u201cI want to find out if any poison can be traced or confirmed,” he said. The International Tennis Federations (ITF) \u2013 which runs Davis Cup, is investigating the charge.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason that Deadspin.com<\/a> gets a gazillion hits every day. If you want to know everything about O.J. Simpson\u2019s latest legal problem or read Big Daddy Drew’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo, that\u2019s the place to go. Controversy sells. Sex sells.<\/p>\n

The top online celebrity site, TMZ.com<\/a>, is so popular that it now has its own television show. If breaking news means cutting to Britney Spears<\/b> making an illegal left turn from Coldwater Canyon onto Mulholland Drive \u2013 an actual feature on TMZ this week, be sure to tune in.<\/p>\n

Celebrity, controversy, and sex are now making they\u2019re way to the tiny screen \u2013 your cellphone. CBS\u2019s mobile entertainment division introduced a show focusing on fashion and gadgets but they scrapped that idea when they noticed that viewer numbers went up when celebrities were on screen. They now have a twice daily show focusing on celebrity gossip.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t think tennis isn\u2019t affected by the world of cellphone entertainment. I can now watch Wimbledon on my tiny screen. All I have to do is hook up a Slingbox<\/a>, record Wimbledon on my DVR, and the Slingbox will beam Andy Roddick<\/b> to my cellphone screen. It doesn\u2019t matter if I\u2019m lying in my backyard or cruising the back roads of Baja.<\/p>\n

If original tennis programming makes it to cellphones, it\u2019ll probably focus on players such as Martina Hingis<\/b> who recently retired after testing positive for cocaine \u2013 known on the street as \u201cblow\u201d – and retired. Check out this hilarious cartoon<\/a>. It shows Martina snorting the sideline of a tennis court.<\/p>\n

Dour, camera shy Nikolay Davydenko<\/b> would be a regular on our Celebrity Tennis show. Suspicious betting patterns on Davydenko\u2019s match with Martin Vassallo-Arguello<\/b> in August of this year kicked off the current controversy over gambling on the professional tennis tour.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s Davydenko episode would focus on the ATP\u2019s demand that Davydenko turn over records for all of the phones he owns or uses. Davydenko\u2019s lawyers have refused to comply.<\/p>\n

The next episode would feature an interview with Davydenko\u2019s lawyer, Professor Frank Immenga<\/b>, who blasted the ATP this week for conducting a witch hunt against Davydenko by fining him $2,000 for \u201cnot trying\u201d in one match and warning him about the same infraction in another. I have to agree with the professor on this one. The betting pattern in the August match clearly showed the fingerprint of a fixed match, but if the ATP can\u2019t prove that the match was fixed and Davydenko was involved, don\u2019t hound the guy to death.<\/p>\n

Since Andy Roddick actually is a celebrity, he\u2019d turn up on Celebrity Tennis because he complained in his blog this week that he was fined $20,000 for skipping Paris while Davydenko was only fined $2,000 for not trying. Roddick said he was recovering from a \u201ctweaked\u201d ankle and wanted to be sure he was prepared for next week\u2019s year end championships in Shanghai. As you can see, Roddick didn\u2019t accuse Davydenko of not trying but he did have a problem with the ATP:<\/p>\n

\u2026in essence they [the ATP] are setting the precedent that preparing and getting healthy for their year end event is worth a 20 grand fine, but tanking (again I have no opinion on guilt or innocence here) only warrants 2 grand\u2026.<\/i><\/p>\n

Alessio di Mauro<\/b> would be the star in today\u2019s episode of Celebrity Tennis. The Italian tennis pro was suspended from the tour for nine months and fined $60,000 by the ATP for betting on tennis matches from November 2006 to June of this year. Di Mauro never bet on his own matches and reportedly his bets were small.<\/p>\n

Wow, maybe I should produce Celebrity Tennis. I\u2019ve already got a week of programming in the can.<\/p>\n\n

Check out our myspace page<\/a> and add us to your friends network!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Join us for the WTA Championships final! We\u2019ll be blogging live this Sunday, November 11th, 2:00pm Los Angeles\/5pm New York. Gambling, cocaine and poison provide more than enough content for a celebrity tennis show. If Jim Rome is talking about tennis, then tennis is definitely cool again. Rome is the spoken word king of daily […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,32,35,47,75,87,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atp-players","category-culture","category-davis-cup","category-gambling","category-performance-enhancing-drugs","category-tennis-general","category-wta-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}