Serving up scandals

Tennis and drugs, tennis and poisoning, and tennis and betting and bribery. Very odd, and certainly most unlikely partners.

Okay, drugs and tennis may have made fleeting news from the early 80s when cocaine was quite popular among a few top players. But poisoning, betting and bribery?

Tennis for long remained untouched by 'utterly damaging' controversies, like the ones crippling cycling. For instance, there is no place for hooligans here, not much violence either. 'Hand of God' or 'Bodyline' has no meaning here. No body parts, like ear lobes, are bitten off, and nobody certainly talks about ravaging his or her opponent's delicate organs like liver and heart.

Except for a terrible incident when a kitchen knife was plunged into Monica Seles' back by a deranged fan, tennis racquets are mostly used for hitting the ball across the net, and not for breaking bones.

It does not mean the game is 'squeaky-clean'.

Odd words are exchanged during the heat of the moment; line calls disputed, and match officials called names. Occasionally, press conferences have turned into wars of words.

The closest the game threatened to become physical was when a player's wife attempted to slap a chair umpire in the 90s. Another chair umpire was even challenged to settle scores in the car park by the father of another tennis player.

Times are fast changing. Now grand slam champions are openly admitting to drug infringements. Players are accused of faking injuries and of not 'trying enough to win a match'.

But the most bizarre story broke out last week when Russia was accused of poisoning a German Davis Cup team member during the semi-final clash in September.

That the match was held in Moscow, and not far away from the Kremlin, gave it a touch of mystery.

Here is a quick recap. Germany's Tommy Haas became ill during his team's 3-2 loss. He later told Bild he had been forced to spend "six hours hanging on to the toilet. I'd never felt so dreadful in my life. It made me feel really scared.

"I am always the only one of us who orders a pudding or a latte macchiato after supper.

"As no one else among us was struck down, they must have - if it happened - done it there," he added when asked to speculate how and when a poisoning might have occurred.

The latest on the incident is that tests on blood and hair samples are to be carried out by a toxicologist in New York. According to the player's agent, Haas is to fly to New York for the tests. Even Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson would have loved it.

When the Kremlin is involved, how can Scotland Yard be left alone? The news is that former Scotland Yard detectives interviewed the wife and brother of Nikolay Davydenko with regard to match-fixing allegations.

The case under the scanner is the retirement of Davydenko through injury from a second-round match against the Argentine World No 74 Martin Vassallo Arguello in the Polish Open in August.

According to agency reports, the online betting exchange Betfair declared void $7.3 million of bets on that match after identifying suspicious patterns of gambling. Davydenko, of course, has always denied any match-fixing.

Italy's Alessio Di Mauro, meanwhile, became the first professional to be caught in a betting crackdown. He is banned for nine months and fined $60,000 after it was found that he wagered on other players' matches.

Another player Philipp Kohlschreiber is charged with an even more serious crime - match-fixing. If Di Mauro was banned for betting on other players' matches, Kohlschreiber is reported to have gone one step forward and fixed matches for Internet betting sites.

Two recent matches in which Kohlschreiber played is under investigation for having attracted 'abnormal volume of bets.' This has opened a can of worms as many players have since revealed illicit approaches by bookmakers.

The situation is so grave that World No 1 Roger Federer, the undisputed ambassador for fair play, has urged officials to come down very hard on gambling.

"At the very top of the game we don't have any problems at all," he said. "It's more the lower-ranked players who have the temptation."

Getting to the grass roots of this problem is difficult indeed.

Let me lighten the mood with this flashback. It involves Charlotte Cooper who won five Wimbledon titles in the late 1890s wearing an ankle-length dress in accordance with proper Victorian attire.

On returning home after one such victory, she found her brother Dr Cooper tending to the family garden. "What have you been doing Chattie?" he asked. "I have just won the Wimbledon," she replied only to hear her brother say "I see" before going back to his roses.

Those were the days..!