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November 10, 2007
Federer backs bans for tennis gamblers
By AFP
SHANGHAI - World number one Roger Federer on Saturday backed bans being imposed on players who bet on games as a way to end the match-fixing controversy clouding tennis.
Federer said officials should come down "very hard" on gambling
after an annus horribilis for tennis, which has been rocked by betting,
drugs and even poison scandals.
"I've never been approached, I've never been on a (gambling) website
and I'm happy to stay that way," he said ahead of the Masters Cup
showpiece here.
"You can bet on other stuff, there's a lot of other things you can
do. But if you bet on tennis as a tennis guy, that's not right.
"People should be fined or banned for a while, how long is up to
other people to decide but we should be very hard on these people."
The 26-year-old Swiss insisted the top players were clean despite an investigation into world number four Nikolay Davydenko over suspicious betting patterns relating to a match he played in August.
"At the very top of the game we don't have any problems at all," he
said. "It's more with the lower-ranked players who have the temptation.
"With the Davydenko issue, we don't know what's going on there yet
but once that's cleared we definitely don't have any of the top guys
involved."
Italy's Alessio di Mauro became the first player to be penalised by
the ATP on Saturday when he was banned for nine months and fined 60,000
dollars for betting on matches between November 2, 2006 and June 12,
2007.
A statement from the ATP said they wanted "a longer suspension" but
added that there was no evidence that the world number 124 either bet
on his own matches or "attempted to affect the outcome of any matches".
The match-fixing furore is one of number of controversies besmirching tennis's squeaky-clean image, along with Martina Hingis's revelation that she tested positive for cocaine and Tommy Haas's accusations of poisoning during a Davis Cup tie.
But Federer backed the sport to bounce back next season after a difficult 2007.
"I hope better times will arrive for tennis. I always believe if
you're stuck in a hole and maybe things aren't going well you will come
out stronger. Everything in life is this way," he said.
The 12-time Grand Slam winner is seeded first for the elite,
season-ending Masters Cup which features the top eight players and
starts on Sunday.
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