"It's Still Better Than Golf"

What is happening to the game of tennis? Within the past few weeks we’ve had a top player, Nikolay Davydenko, accused of possibly throwing a match in relation to a gambling scheme and then a couple of weeks later being fined for “lack of effort” in a match. We’ve had one of the better players of the last ten years, Martina Hingis, test positive for cocaine and then abruptly announce her retirement. To top it all off there is going to be  investigations into Russia’s Davis Cup wins over Germany in September as to whether Tommy Haas was poisoned. Oh boy.

First off the fine of $2000 against Davydenko is a joke. If a player were fined for every time he or she put forth less than 100 percent effort in a match the ATP and the WTA would be rolling in money. Rafael Nadal lost 6-0 in the last set of his Paris Masters semi. Didn’t look like a lot of effort there but I don’t see him getting fined. The ATP is going to try and make an example out of Davydenko, he’s already on their sh*t list for the match fixing allegations. But if there’re going to discourage such non-effort in the future I think a fine of more than $2000 is definitely needed.

Hingis supposedly tested positive for cocaine after her third round loss at Wimbledon. In the confusing world of drug testing both her “A” and “B” samples came back positive and she faced a potential two-year suspension from tennis. Rather than fighting it she announced her retirement. I would have rather her go down swinging instead of bowing to the powers that be without a fight. Hopefully she can somehow clear her name and go down in history as the great champion that she is rather than as a cokehead who got caught.

Which brings us to the alleged poisoning of Tommy Haas. If you remember Haas had to pull out of his second singles match against Russia’s Mikhail Youzhny with what, at the time, appeared to be a suspected stomach virus. Leave it to the dirty Commie Russkies to come up with so diabolical a plan as this. Just kidding. Even in the paranoid world of Davis Cup this story seems a little far-fetched. I’m not saying it can’t be true, but until there’s definite proof I’m not buying it.