Novak Djokovic has vehemently denied allegations in an Italian newspaper that he had deliberately lost a match against the French player Fabrice Santoro at the Paris Masters in 2007.
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Novak Djokovic defeated French teen Quentin Halys to reach the Australian Open third round but faced questions about match-fixing after.
Roger Federer isn’t buying into the explosive tennis match-fix hysteria, instead using logical thinking and calm rationality to call for solid evidence – and names – of any alleged player evildoers involved in the aged and vague situation.
“One has to be careful, you can’t just write any old thing, you have to have proof”, Santoro, now a commentator, said.
“The match could have gone either way”, Djokovic said in his on-court interview.
However, Federer said he had a lot of respect for the 27-year-old, and had earmarked the match as a potential minefield when the draw was released late last week. The BBC said it had “secret evidence of match-fixing in tennis”, but did not name any players.
“What is there to say?”
Asked, by an Italian journalist, if she’d watched a replay of that match, Williams gave a touchy response: “Yeah, I watch it every day”.
“You can pick any match that you like that the top player lost and just create a story out of it”, he added.
Chris Kermode, heads of the Association of Tennis Professionals, rejected claims evidence of match-fixing had “been suppressed for any reason or isn’t being thoroughly investigated”.
The 92nd-ranked Kateryna Bondarenko earned one of her biggest wins since returning from retirement after having a baby in 2013, beating two-time major victor and No. 23-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-1, 7-5.
The player who chose to be anonymous stated that match fixing wasn’t limited to low rank players but some of the top players in the world were also a part of the racket.
The report referring to the Paris match is unrelated to allegations made in a BBC/Buzzfeed report, which has brought renewed attention to tennis’s struggles to to allay concerns about match-fixing since the explosion in online betting.
The ATP report into a suspicious match between the Russian Nikolay Davydenko and Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina cleared both players of breaking any rules.
“There hasn’t been too many matches where top players lost in last decade or so in early rounds”.
“I know my name’s now been thrown into it. I think it’s a joke to deal with it”, Hewitt said.
“We have, I think, a sport (that has) evolved and upgraded our programs and authorities to deal with these particular cases”, he said. “I have nothing more to say, guys”.
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“I think it’s a joke to deal with it”, Hewitt said of the saga after his career-ending straight-sets loss to David Ferrer. “I think we deserve to know everything that’s sort of out there. As long as it’s like that, it’s just speculation”. “You know, because I don’t believe the players are allowed to be sponsored by betting companies, but the tournaments are”. “As a player, you just want to be made aware of everything that’s going on”, said Andy Murray.
