OPINION

By Tim Dahlberg

updated 12:37 a.m. ET March 6, 2008

Roger Federer has lost two straight matches, but you can still get him at 6-5 odds to win the French Open. Better hurry, though, because it may not be long before all bets are off.

That’s the hope of French Open officials, anyway, though the odds of winning a ban on betting the tennis tournament are probably worse than those of Federer losing his opening-round match. The mere fact they’re trying, however, says a lot about how scared tennis is running these days.

The sport had enough problems to begin with, not the least of which are a dysfunctional tournament structure and an increasingly apathetic fan base.

But now it faces a match-fixing scandal that strikes at the core of the integrity of the sport itself. Funny things are happening on the court and off, and rumors swirl that the Russian Mafia is involved.

No one suspects Federer of doing anything wrong, even if he’s only lost two back-to-back matches in the last five years. That would be akin to believing Tiger Woods would hit one out of bounds on the last hole to tank the U.S. Open.

But there are a lot of suspicions about a match last August involving another top player on the ATP tour, Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko; so many suspicions that an Internet betting site took the unprecedented step of voiding millions in wagers. Since then, there have been some other disturbing signs that all may not be what it seems in professional tennis.

Belgium’s Gilles Elseneer said he was offered more than $100,000 to lose a first-round match at Wimbledon in 2005, while a French player said he turned down money to throw a match. A few months ago, tennis officials were given a list of some 150 suspect matches going back to 2002, including some Grand Slam events.

Five or six players on the women’s tour also reported they were approached about throwing matches, prompting the head of the WTA to issue a warning that any player caught fixing a match would be banned for life from the sport.

“We were surprised by the amount of gambling on tennis in general, and the number of players approached,” tour chairman Larry Scott said in January in Australia.

Scott apparently hasn’t been in Italy lately. Last week, Frederick Luzzi became the fifth Italian player punished for gambling on matches when he was suspended 200 days and fined $50,000 by the ATP for betting 273 times.

Tennis officials have reacted much the way you’d expect, getting together in London late last year to say that while they’re concerned about allegations, they don’t believe their sport is corrupt. And, of course, they’ve started a study, this one headed by two former British anti-corruption officers.

French Open organizers did something more concrete. They filed suit last month against three online betting operations, asking courts in Belgium and Paris to ban them from taking bets on their tournament because they stain its reputation by associating it with gambling.

The suit contained some astonishing numbers. According to the French tennis federation there was between $750 million and $1.5 billion wagered on the ATP Masters Series tournament in Paris last year, and that bets on the French Open would be even higher.

The suit likely has little chance of success, but that’s not the real problem.

It aims at the wrong target, the betting companies who were the first to cry foul when some $7 million was bet on 87th-ranked Martin Vassallo when he played fourth-ranked Davydenko last August in Poland. He won when Davydenko suddenly quit in the third set, citing a foot injury.

It’s not the bookies who are the problem; the only thing they do is make it easier to bet. And if someone does throw a match, they’re usually the second ones to know what’s going on.

The real problem is tennis itself. The sport is about the easiest to fix since it takes the involvement of only one player, who can always claim that he just was missing his spots on any particular day. That’s especially true in early-round matches with lower-seeded players, which don’t get nearly the audience or attention as those in later rounds.

That’s not the fault of the people who run the sport, but you might think they would have recognized it before the bookies brought it to their attention. And instead of simply giving the issue lip service, you would think they might have come up with a systemic plan to reduce the risk of matches being fixed.

Tennis is on fragile ground as it is. The sport has been in a funk for decades in the United States and is barely noticed outside the major championships.

Television ratings are anemic, and only hardcore fans can name any decent rivalries.

All it needs is a good scandal to kill it off completely.

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