Starace, Bracciali Suspended for Betting
ROME (Dec. 22) - The ATP has suspended top Italian player Potito Starace and countryman Daniele Bracciali for betting on tennis matches.
The 31st-ranked Starace was suspended for six weeks and ordered to pay a $30,000 fine, the Italian tennis federation said Saturday in a statement. Bracciali, ranked 258th, was banned for three months and fined $20,000. Both suspensions are effective Jan. 1.
The Italian federation said Starace made five bets for a total of some $130 two years ago, while Bracciali made some 50 bets of $7 each from 2004-05. It denounced the penalties as disproportionate, saying the players never bet on their own matches.
"Injustice is done," the statement said. "These penalties are absolutely, excessively severe compared to the magnitude of the violations carried out by the two players."
The federation said the two were not aware of the ATP's betting regulations, and that they stopped placing the bets as soon as they learned it was against the rules.
Another Italian player, Alessio Di Mauro, became the first player sanctioned under the ATP's new anti-corruption rules when he received a nine-month ban in November, also for betting on matches.
Concerns about match-fixing have risen since August, when an online betting company reported unusual betting patterns during a match between fourth-ranked Nikolay Davydenko of Russia and Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina. The company, Betfair, voided all bets and the ATP has been investigating.
Davydenko, who retired while trailing in the third set, denies wrongdoing.
Since then, several players have said that they had been approached with offers to fix matches in exchange for money.
Evonne Goolagong gets No. 1 ranking, 30 years late
SUNRISE BEACH, Australia (AP) -Evonne Goolagong finally made it to No. 1, although the honor was 30 years late in coming.
The Australian tennis star was told by the WTA Tour that she should have been top-ranked for a two-week period in 1976. That was a stretch in which she was in the middle of winning six tournaments, including the Australian Open and the season-ending Virginia Slims Championship.
But when some tournament records were transferred to a computer in 1976, all of Goolagong's points were not entered and she never received the top ranking, the WTA said.
The WTA has amended its records, making Goolagong the 16th No. 1 player since the introduction of tour computer rankings in 1975.
Two weeks ago, the 56-year-old Goolagong received a trophy from the WTA that is now displayed in her oceanside home.
``I'm very proud of the achievement,'' Goolagong told The Associated Press. ``I was on a roll for that stretch in 1976. It was a great surprise to hear after all these years.''
A recent search of the rankings archive in St. Petersburg, Fla., found several paper records were missing between April and July 1976.
Rankings were calculated twice weekly until 1990 - they are done weekly now - and it was discovered Goolagong overtook Chris Evert by 0.8 points after the Aussie's victory in the Virginia Slims in Los Angeles in late April 1976, before Evert regained the crown May 10.
``Unfortunately our record-keeping wasn't perfect in those early days of women's tennis and our ranking system was viewed as a means of just accepting tournament entries,'' WTA Tour chief executive and chairman Larry Scott said.
``It wasn't until the early 1980s that the media and players started to pay attention to the changes in the rankings during the year as opposed to only the end-of-season rankings.''
Goolagong reached the finals of 16 of 24 Grand Slam singles tournaments from 1971 to 1976, winning five of them. She won Wimbledon titles nine years apart - in 1971 and 1980 - to equal Bill Tilden's mark for having the longest gaps between championships at the All-England Club. She has seven Grand Slam singles titles overall.
Goolagong retired in 1985 and lived in the United States - at Hilton Head, S.C., and Naples, Fla. - until moving back to Australia in 1992.
Now, Goolagong is frequently seen power walking in the streets around her Sunrise Beach home north of Brisbane. She and husband Roger Cawley organize tennis camps for Aboriginal youths. During next month's Australian Open, 15 young athletes from across Australia will be flown in for a camp outside Melbourne.
New Delhi: A knee surgery may have kept Sania Mirza out of action for two months but a career-best singles ranking of 27 and a slew of wins over top 20 players convince her that she had the best year of her career so far.
Bouncing back from the surgery to touch new heights this year, Sania proved her initial success was not a flash in the pan and says it was a "personal victory" for her in the breakthrough year. "It was a successful year for me - perhaps my best so far. And it was a personal victory for me to have done reasonably despite the knee surgery that also took away 10 weeks from my year," Sania told PTI.
Full coverage: India in Australia
After making a fine start to 2007, reaching semifinals at Hobart and Pattaya City, Sania's momentum was snapped in March when her right knee was put under the knife, throwing her out of action for two months. She, however, bounced back in style in the second half of the season and had a bull run in the summer hardcourt season where she reached the final at Stanford, semifinal at Cincinnati and quarterfinal in the Tier I event at San Diego.
On the way, she conquered five top 20 players, including former number one Martina Hingis at Los Angeles. "I was playing as well when I was ranked 66 at the beginning of the year as I was when I was ranked 27 towards the latter half of the year," Sania said.
At the US Open, she became the first Indian woman to be seeded in a Grand Slam event even though her campaign was cut short in the third round.
Her exploits showed in her rankings as well and the Hyderabadi ace rose to 27 in singles in August, and four doubles titles with four different partners saw her leapfrog to an all-time high doubles ranking of 18. Towards the end of the year, injuries came to plague her again and she opted out of a couple of events with abdominal strain.
Sania, however, does not think she was the only player to face the problem and said, "One is always working towards improving one's game and fitness and this is an ongoing process. Every top 100 player on the tour is struggling with fitness issues. Of course, Indians are probably not as fit as the average European or American but then we have our other strengths."
Sports Yearender 2007
And after roping in a new physical trainer in Renuka Pinto, Sania is getting battle-hardenend for the season ahead. "The role of the physio-trainer is manifold. She has to help the player increase her speed, endurance and overall fitness level. She also has to manage injuries and strengthen specific areas of the body to prevent injuries," Sania said about her new fitness regime.
"We concentrate more on the overall improvement in my game and fitness level with special emphasis on things like my serve and volleys."
Dwelling on the level of competition in women's tennis, she said it has grown in leaps and bounds. "It's phenomenally high with a lot more depth today even compared to five years ago. I think the level is at its highest ever," says poster girl of Indian tennis.
Sania also set the target higher for the forthcoming year and believes finishing within the top 10 is not impossible altogether. "It is a possibility but a lot of things have to fall into place and there are no guarantees."
What a fantastic win for Sania Mirza in the PQF at the #1.34K Acura Classic WTA in San Diego! .. 6-1 6-2 blitzkireg over the 6th seed Dinara Safina (RUS,14) who had a pile-driver pummell her into the subsoil and bedrock (OK, I have to use a civil engineering analogy sometime out here) .. Please see the match reports and details posted by the TennisIndia onsite correspondents, Varma and myself (scroll down a little at that page). Today, Sania plays the top seed Maria Sharapova (RUS,2) .. The only time these two faced each other was in the final-16 at the US Open in 2005, when Sharapova seemed to get dominated and unable to handle many of Sania's winners, but still managed to win by a 62 61 score, thanks to her never-say-die attitude in running shots down and forcing Sania to make mistakes. Sania is clearly playing much less error-prone and much more accurate a game these days. An upset is certainly not out of the questions today .. We will be there to cover it today .. The match is at about 12 noon at San Diego (8 pm FRI London, 3.30 am SAT in India) .. I believe it will be on ZeeTV in India, probably live, and will be telecast tape-delayed in the US an hour or so later on ESPN and TennisChannel.
Meanwhile, The India #2 Sunitha Rao (IND,243) added to the gazillionth upsets pulled by Indians (Rohan, Prakash, Somdev, Sania, Sunitha etc) in the last 4-5 weeks ... Atthe $50K Vancouver challenger in Canada, Sunitha upset third seed Abigail Spears (USA,164), by a 62 62 score yesterday .. She had beaten a qualifier, Augustina Lepore (ARG,513), by the same score in the R1 earlier .. Sunitha Rao, still only 21 years old, has been playing at a higher level for the last few weeks too ..
A third upset artist this week, though at a lower level event, has been Ashutosh Singh (IND,737), unseeded but on a great run at the $10K+H ITF futures in Delhi .. Among only two Indians to even reach the QF there, he has now come to the final, with a 64 64 upset of the seocnd seed, Yu Wang J. (CHN,632) today .. In the QF yesterday, Ashutosh beat Tsu Yang Lin of Taiwan, 62 62 .. See the tournament discussion thread we have for the three-futures sequence ongoing in India ..
At the big $125K+H Segovia challenger, Rohan Bopanna and Aisam Qureshi (PAK) have reached the doubles semifinal .. Rohan, ranked #101 this week will crack the top-100 next week, and become the first Indian in over 10 years to do that .. The last one was a guy called Ma-something Bhu-something ....
By the way, I hardly mentioned the fabulous run by Somdev DevVarman in the qualifying rounds of the $600K Washingdon DC ATP last weekend .. Can you believe that the dude murdered the qualies second seed #41 Andre Sa by a 62 61 score, afterupsetting the 5th seed Kamil Kapcoviv, 62 62 ? .. Read all about his incredible exploits in the WashingtonDC ATP thread .. After something like 30 matches dating back to January in college, and some top-100 upsets etc, Somdev finally had a poor serving day in the first round after he qualified in, falling to Paul Goldstein (USA,51)
