The high alert is aimed at big-time gamblers and the tennis pros who they are increasingly trying – sometimes successfully – to corrupt.

Coincident with opening day for the grass-court extravaganza, there are plans to announce strict new anti-corruption rules, involving fines and suspensions. Red flags have been raised repeatedly in recent years, with a resulting investigation revealing that at least 45 matches, including several at Wimbledon, are regarded as highly suspicious.

Significantly, it was British bookmakers who raised the alarm, as they noticed spikes in money bet for certain otherwise unexceptional matches. Tennis in general has begun to attract enormous betting interest, ranking behind only soccer and racing in the U.K. One online book alone says it took more than $1 billion (Canadian) in Wimbledon bets last year.

Such vasts sums are bound to attract sophisticated criminal interest. Whether such interests have been there all along or not is open to question, but fixing has been a problem in all of sports dating back to the very beginning.

Allegations of “tanking” are as old as tennis and include an ongoing probe into a match last year involving world No. 4 Nikolay Davydenko. What’s new is the suggestion that the practice is more insidious than anyone had suspected, aided by rocketing sums being bet worldwide on Internet gambling sites.

Why would one match attract 10 or 100 or 1,000 times more betting action than another? Something’s fishy and the bookies know it.

A low- or middle-ranked player can take a payment from gamblers that will guarantee a far richer payday than if he or she were to win a round or two. In tennis, of all sports, it’s easy to throw a match through moments of indifferent play or faked illness or injury.

Nine-time Wimbledon singles champ Martina Navratilova tells The Times of London: “The key is to not start doing it. Apparently once you do one match, then they’ve got you. The syndicate have got you. You are on the hook because now they have got proof that you have done it once.”

Investigators, headed by a pair of former Scotland Yard detectives, found that many top players said they “knew of” other players who had been approached to throw matches. The sport’s culture, apparently, has led competitors to keep quiet, not rock the boat.

Authorities appear determined to chase down any and all rumours, scare off the organized gamblers and scare straight the players.

“The joy of competitive sport for the spectator depends on the belief that the competitors are trying to win,” says The Independent, in an editorial. “If that belief is undermined by the suspicion that matches are being fixed, the life-enhancing quality of sport is sullied. …

“Part of Wimbledon’s charm is the assumption of fair play – not all sports have succeeded in preserving spectators’ confidence in good sportsmanship in the face of big money. Even if sportsmanship contains an element of myth, it is a good myth to have. It does no harm, therefore, to believe that tennis is a more courtly business than other professional sports.”
From: http://www.thestar.com/Sports/Tennis/article/447516