The Australian Open Championship Belt

So, match fixing allegations have rocked my favourite sport.  I would like to say I can't believe it.  That surely something like this couldn't happen in tennis.  Unfortunately I'm not such a wide eyed innocent.  The chain of logic works like this.  Tennis is a competition.  That means there are winners and losers.  That means people will bet on the result and that means that some people will try and arrange the result to match their bets.  If tennis players weren't being bribed its entirely possible that they would be threatened.

I must admit that my last illusions about tennis were shattered when I noticed that one of the key sponsors of this years Australian season was a betting agency.  This isn't to imply that the agency itself is involved in anything underhand, indeed professional bookmakers are the people with the most to lose from match rigging.  However the presence of betting agencies that close to the tennis organisers is pretty much equivalent to a public statement from those organisers that they have irredeemably prostituted themselves for cash.

There is one reassuring aspect to the sorry affair.  At least publicly tennis officials appear to be in denial.  In this they are following in a proud tradition of attempting to conceal and or cover up wrongdoing within an institution.  I have written before about the penchant for organisations who depend on the public trust to betray that trust by lying or concealing wrongdoing within their ranks.  Let's be clear, the presence of some corrupt individuals isn't a shame or an embarrassment.  It's pretty much impossible to avoid.  Where the shame lies is in how the organisation attempts to deal with the situation.  Denial and cover up seem to be the favourite methods so that when the news finally leaks out (which it always does eventually) the entire institution is, deservedly, held up for public pillory as opposed to a handful of bad apples.

Where does tennis go from here?  I have a suggestion.  If you want to get rid of the criminals then you have to get rid of the betting.  The easiest way would be to arrange results in advance of the matches.  If, like me, you enjoy watching the tennis for the quality of the match rather than the result then it shouldn't matter too much what the result is.  Essentially I'm suggesting that tennis become more like professional wrestling.  Everybody knows that's staged (not faked, too many wrestlers are injured to claim that) but the crowds still turn out in their thousands.  I enjoy watching it occasionally myself.

Think of it, we could have tennis players trash talking each other in pre match interviews, use of foreign objects, interference from other players not involved in the match.  It would be awesome!  And from a purely nationalistic point of view in Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios we already have the makings of one of the most awesome tag teams of all time.  Bring it on I say; I'm just popping out to buy myself a giant foam finger, middle digit preferred.