Benneteau Alleges Federer Possible Corruption

Does Benneteau have any proof that Tiley is being paid by the Laver Cup people? Because Tennis Australia, along with the USTA, has invested in the Laver Cup, it is much more likely he is being paid as an employee of TA. Benneteau could complain about those 2 governing bodies being involved with the tournament.

As far as getting special privileges at tournaments, it’s more likely Fed gets those because he sells tickets, attracts sponsors, and broadcast $, than any other reasons. You can be certain that other players ask for specific times and courts as well. I wish there wasn’t so much emphasis but on the market aspect of tennis, but I get that tennis is a business, and tourney directors have to consider who can bring in the fans and the $.

George,

You have no objection to a tournament, a Grand Slam, making it easier for Fed to get to the finals. You think there are going to be more tickets sold if Djokovic and Zverev reach the finals instead of Federer. This is a sporting event; its not a staged exhibition. Fed might get more night matches at slams because of his popularity, but even that perk shouldn’t be his alone.

The stars always get privileges, but to suggest Federer get schedule graces so he can reach the finals is absurd. LeBron might improve the NBA Finals TV numbers, but the NBA officials shouldn’t favor him because of this.

Obviously Federer would sell more tickets and get better ratings than Djokovic and Zverev.

Tennis is a business. If tournament directors can tweak schedules to accommodate players with top billing, then it is their perogative. They own the event and their job is to sell.

And I do think NBA officials give stars leeway with calls. Many players said as much when playing Michael Jordan. It may not be fair, but that is reality.

Look Fed lost in a night match to MILLMAN at the Open and complained about the roof being closed creating stuffy conditions. Obviously there’s no way to protect Fed from getting to the finals of big events. If there was we’d be calling pro tennis pro wrestling.

Scoop,

Very interesting comment. Are you saying that there was perhaps cooperation on both sides?

I just don’t think your insider is right. Here’s why, why would Nadal or any of the top players do it? They already make boatloads of money. They train exceptionally hard…for what? To throw a match?

I don’t buy it. Also, if it got out that would be the end of tennis as it’s become the death knell for professional cycling which I don’t really follow, but I’ve heard its popularity has decreased just from the PED’s all the cyclists were using reduced the interest in the sport.

For example, a couple of weeks ago I saw Greg Anderson at a juniors tennis match. And it was right after Vienna where Kevin Anderson, his brother, won and then in Paris I think he got knocked out early. And I said to Greg that Kevin is really playing well, and he said, yes, but he was really tired in Paris after winning Vienna.

If there was match fixing in tennis you’d think Kevin Anderson would know about it and tell his brother and his brother would possibly leak it. What I’m saying, is that this would get out and it’d ruin the sport and I don’t think anyone would want that to happen.

There is big money in the sport–at least at the top–but i think now more than possibly decades ago, the integrity of the sport is greater because we see what these players do to prepare themselves, their bodies, for these matches.

I’m around junior tennis a lot these days. And I just think that the competition is what drives these players. They all want to beat each other badly, even when they’re 12. So I can’t imagine players at the top–now in the Futures where’s there’s relatively no money I can see it on a gambling level–throwing matches.

What do we hear all the time from guys like Djoko and Fed and Nadal, “our sport,” maximizing the popularity of the sport, you think these guys would throw matches. Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think so. And when I wrote the book with Spadea, never did I ever hear him say anything–and maybe I should’ve asked him–about match fixing.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/nov/15/davis-cup-atp-cup-merge-tennis

On another topic – I can see the Hopman Cup disappearing if the ATP event gets going. eventually. And goodbye Davis Cup.

Also not sure about the timing just before the Aust Open.

Sam,

Pro tennis has been alive and well now for 40 years. Has there ever been one match in a slam where it’s even alleged a match was fixed? No, I don’t think so. So why would you think there is? Don’t you think there’s been plenty of straight shooters like a Wilander or Cash or McEnroe who at some point would’ve come out and said, “Yes, I fixed a match and got paid $2 million.”? I don’t think you can keep something like that a secret.

I would like to add my two cents to this debate. First, although a lot of well prepared damage control has been done in the last few days, Federer’s favouring is not limited to schedule, but it is also question of bad scheduling of his rivals or opponents, “tweaked” draws, “tweaked” surface speed, etd.

There can be no debate about surfaces: the ex-director of Paris Bercy (now director of the tournament in Marseille), Caujolle, explained in detail how the surface was changed again and again until Federer won the tournament in 2011. The news is from a few days ago and easy to find.

For the schedule and the draws, the acid test has been time and time again the ability to predict them. Before the WTF, the composition of the groups was widely known on Twitter. The schedule of play also, and most fans knew that Federer would play his semi first and Djokovic his last group match in the evening.

It is not the first time: it was notorious that in a period from 2007 every draw on faster surfaces at slams had Federer and Djokovic in the same half, and Murray and Nadal in the other half — Murray had a positive h2h against Federer, and Djokovic had a positive h2h with Nadal on these kinds of court. At RG, Djokovic was almost always in Nadal’s half.

The draws are “tweaked” for years now. Anybody who has some limited knowledge of statistics would be alarmed by the anomalies. But to make thing worse, now the draws are not public, open to an audience. It doesn’t change much: any software expert can explain that it is easy to make a piece of software that will “optimize” the draw for a given player, or two given players.

It is not a question of money: while it is true that in France the audience want to see Federer, in London, this week, Djokovic sold out his matches, even in the afternoon. There is a young generation of fans who grew up with Novak dominating the Tour and who like his game. This is a question of corruption: Nike, IMG, Addidas, Rolex, all this companies added to the problem.

Federer was very aware of the question raised by Benneteau and tried to deflect them in the presser. I would not be surprised if we were gratified by more revelations and see a Armstrong-esque fall, but for different reasons.

Interesting comments about fixing in boxing, Scoop. Yeah, it seems that news of corruption rarely leaks out. In fact, I often puzzle over how well these things are kept hidden. So, the old “if there was corruption, we’d definitely know about it” line of reasoning doesn’t really seem to hold water. 😉

Some potent stuff, mat4.

“Before the WTF, the composition of the groups was widely known on Twitter.”

Very disturbing. Is there any way that there could be an “innocent” explanation for this?

As for shady draws, ESPN ran an article in 2011 that analyzed U.S. Open draws for the previous 10 years. They quoted an expert in statistics who said there were very compelling reasons to believe that the draws for the top 2 seeds in the first round were not random. Here ’tis:

http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/6850893/espn-analysis-finds-top-seeds-tennis-us-open-had-easier-draw-statistically-likely

Look Sam i just think it’s foolish to talk about match-fixing unless you have a specific match to analyze. Did Davydenko fix that match? Did Dolgo? Of course, it looks like they did. But just because a draw might be tweaked it doesn’t mean that one player is laying down so the other can beat him/her.

What do we always say in tennis: “You can only beat the player your name matches up against in the draw.”

As far as court surface, we all know that courts both hard and grass have slowed down in the past decade. Fed would probably be at 25 slams now if the courts from Wimbledon to the US and Aussie Open were not slowed down. So i think Fed has more of a beef about the slow courts than anyone else has on fixed matches or draws because with the courts we have direct proof.

Dan,

These are assumptions based on thin air. First, about surface speed, and tennis speed in general, you have a lot of good articles that show that the game has not slowed down.

http://www.tennisabstract.com/blog/2013/04/08/the-mirage-of-surface-speed-convergence/

https://fogmountaintennis.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/court-speed/

On Jeff Sackman blog you will find other articles that shows that tennis did not slow down in the past decade. So we do not know it “all”.

What changed tennis the most are the racquets and the strings. Just take your old wooden racquet, or the one you used in the eighties, and play a set with it. Ask yourself how many returns you would make against a top server with a 60 inch square frame and natural guts.

Just have a look at the #nextgen. The first to break through the rankings were all tall guys with big serves: Zverev, Khachanov, Fritz, Kyrgios, Tsitsipas. They are all 190+ cm tall. The guys who are about 185 make good results two years later, with the exceptions of a few players nurtured by their federations. The importance of the serve + 1 shot is higher than ever, just ask Craig O’Shannessy, or Novak Djokovic, who tweaks his game accordingly. It is contradicting the myths about the influence of court surfaces “speed”, or speed of conditions of play to be precise.

Second, about Federer winning 25 slams… He had an unfair share of help for years from the organizers and the corporations he endorses. E.g., starting on Sunday the WTF, 8 times in the last 10 years, to be fresh for the semi.

Even now, when more and more facts surfaces about Federer’s collusion with organizers (Tyley, Caujolle), Tennis TV, etc. you avoid to write anything about it. As a journalist, it should be your duty.

Mat4,

You’re telling me that Wimbledon grass is not slower today than it was twenty years ago? Come on, that’s ridiculous. Yes, the racquets and strings have probably made a bigger difference than court speed, but you should come to Newport one year if you want to see how fast and low ball used to bounce at Wimbledon. Andre Agassi, Hewitt, Nalbandian, and Nadal weren’t going to make the Wimbledon finals in the 1980’s.

Yes, the NextGen players who are tall are dominating no doubt, but there’s still Nishikori, Thiem’s not a real big guy, Goffin and Schwartzmann. The Argentine is not much bigger than Harold Solomon. Look at the guy who reached the finals of the NextGen tournament, de Minaur, that guy’s a shrimp. Talent and heart have almost as much to do with success as height. Only Cilic and Del Potro have ever won slams being taller than 6-4 and both their slams were a little lucky as Delpo beat Fed a set down and Cilic got to play Nishikori in finals.

“it is easy to find a lot of disturbing stats on CindyBlack TL on Twitter. JANE79591745 compiled a lot of infos about conflicts of interest. Pijetlovic wrote about GS draws — the paper is available on the net.”

Thanks for the info, mat4. Yes, I’ve read the Pijetlovic article in the past.

“On Jeff Sackman blog you will find other articles that shows that tennis did not slow down in the past decade. So we do not know it ‘all’.”

Interesting points, mat4. So, it seems that the topic of whether the courts have been slowed down is very complex, with lots of disagreement.

Along with the continued dominance of the “Big Three” and the number of players over 30 in the top 100, the steadily increasing height of the top men’s players continues to be a major trend in men’s tennis.

In 1977, the average height of the top 20 players in the world was between 5′ 9″ and 5′ 10″. As 2018 draws to a close, the average height of the top 20 is almost 6′ 4″– and if Khachanov (now #11) bumps Nishikori from the top 10, the average for those in the top 10 would cross that barrier– I believe for the first time. This isn’t a basketball team as metaphor: it’s the real thing.

Schwartzman is the only true small player near the top of men’s tennis…you have to go all the way down to #48 to find the next player (Dzumhur) who would be below the 1977 mean. The player Dan describes as a “shrimp”– De Minaur– indeed has a slight build, but he is 6′ tall.

Even more striking, the young players in the top 100 who are at or close to their highest ever ranking…Khachanov. Tsitsipas, Medvedev, Fritz, Jarry, Hurkacz…all tend to hail from the land of the giants. And don’t look now, but a finally healthy Reilly Opelka is winning challengers again and will make his long-anticipated jump, I expect, next year.

With modern racquets and strings, better training, and little need to go to net (the low volley being the achilles heel of the big man of yesteryear), the returns to size and athleticism (130 mph utility serve, more free points, easier court coverage, ability to hit down on high balls) aren’t going to go away soon, if ever. In the near future we may well have under 6′ tournaments to go along with senior events and nostalgic wood racquet competitions.

Wow, I was surprised to see De Minaur listed at 6. A lot of guys are listed at 6, but I wonder if they really are like Shapovalov, Bautista Agut, Wawrinka etc. Kudla and Mac Mac are both under 6 and so is Kozlov I imagine although he might not be the best example. Yes, men’s tennis has become a skyscraper domain with really only Nishikori a top male player as being under 6. Good point that the low volley used to be the big man’s Achilles Heel.

Take a bow Lendl – Zverev bts Federer SS.

Hartt – we always seem to be typing at the same time….

I hope you have your treats ready although it’s going to be tough.

I bet there’s someone out there ready to cry ‘fix’ about this match 🙂