The scandal broke Monday when the BBC and BuzzFeed News published reports timed for the start of the Australian Open alleging that tennis authorities have ignored widespread evidence of match-fixing involving 16 tennis players who have ranked in the top 50 over the past decade.
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Novak Djokovic has denied “absurd” allegations in an Italian newspaper that he “wanted to lose” a match at the Paris Masters in 2007.
Williams’ next opponent will be 18-year-old Russian Daria Kasatkina, who beat Croatia’s Ana Konjuh 6-4, 6-3, and she faces a potential quarterfinal match against 2015 finalist Maria Sharapova, who reached the third round with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Aliaksandra Sasnovich.
“It’s not true… What it is to say?”
“I think that the story that was written was rubbish because they’re just pouring dirt on our sport without proving anything”, Sergiy Stakhovsky, a longtime member of the ATP’s player council, told CNN.
Djokovic, the number one player in the world, admitted that back in 2007 he was offered £110,000 to concede a match, an offer he declined. He said: “I’ve been aware of it since I was quite young and I think when people come with big sums of money when you’re at that age, some people can make mistakes”. “I was approached through people that were working with me at that time”, he added.
BuzzFeed News and the BBC claim that the sport has refused to take action against a network of 16 players despite repeated warnings.
“I think it’s not supported by any kind of proof, any evidence, any facts”. It didn’t even get to me, the guy that was trying to talk to me, didn’t even get to me directly.
Kvitova suffered from glandula fever a year ago and pulled out of the Australian Open warm-up events in Shenzhen and Sydney with a gastro-intestinal illness but paid full credit to Moscow-born Gavrilova – the only one of nine Australian women in the draw to survive the first round.
Indeed, while Tuttosport claimed that the allegations were found in documents that are part of an investigation into match-fixing by prosecutors in Cremona, they did not present any of the documents or any other supporting evidence and stressed that Djokovic was not under investigation. He went on to state that are three big groups who control match betting in tennis and they have a specific set of individuals who approach players with match fixing offers. “Until somebody comes out with the real proof and evidence, it’s only a speculation for me”. “I’ve watched them and watched replays of them”, he said, according to the Daily Mail.
Djokovic was all business in the first round, seeing off the challenge of the talented Hyeon Chung in straight sets 6-3, 6-2, 6-4. Chairman Kermode and the Tennis Integrity United have rejected news reports that match-fixing has gone unchecked in the sport. “The higher it goes, the more surprised I would be”.
The four-time Australian Open champion, playing his 65th consecutive major, advanced 6-3, 7-5, 6-1 over Alexandr Dolgopolov.
Eaton also hit out at the “poor choice of structure and process” for the Tennis Integrity Unit, saying it needs to be more open and relies too much on betting analysis, rather than field investigations. “As long as it’s like that, it’s just speculation”.
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“There’s always a danger – previous year (the third round) was the end for me”.
