Fed fumes as the ATP trembles

Written by: Staff on 12th November 2010

Fed fumes as the ATP trembles |

You cannot fault the ATP for effort but, by the cringe, you cannot give them much credit for results. With their legendary sense of timing, the tennis governors have lumbered into action one month after Roger Federer was dragged into a betting row, and have issued a statement. The world trembled.

To give you the background: a bloke called Ted Forstmann, the chairman and chief executive of IMG and, as such, one of the most powerful men in the sport, has admitted that he once placed a bet on Federer to beat Rafa Nadal in the French Open final. The bet was made back in 2007 (and Forstmann lost his $40,000 by backing the Fed to win), back in an innocent time when gambling on the sport was not deemed a crime against humanity.

But, that said, Forstmann still heads the world’s largest sports agency, the same agency that represents both Federer and Nadal. Betting on one of your clients to beat another is probably not the smartest move, even if you are as rich as Croesus and as powerful as Genghis Khan.

All of this came to light last month when Forstmann was sued for breach of contract by Agate Printing Inc in Los Angeles. Jim Agate claimed that he was the “conduit” for Forstmann’s sports bets and Forstmann himself admitted to the Federer wager. There are various other claims and counter claims in the case, most of which are too near the knuckle and too contentious to repeat here just in case we, too, find ourselves in court, but the one that rattled the ATP’s cage was that $40k on the Mighty Fed.

The ATP climbed atop its high horse and announced that it “has sent the message very clearly to Mr Forstmann that we consider his behaviour inappropriate, and that he will be in violation of the rules if he engages in such activity in the future.”

In other words, the ATP knows what Mr Forstmann has been up to and if he does it again, it will be rather cross. To paraphrase Monty Python’s Life of Brian: “He’s not the head of IMG, he’s a very naughty boy.”

It is hard hitting judgements like this that have made the ATP what it is today. Remember how they dealt with the nandrolone scandal in 2002-3, when eight players tested positive for the steroid and another 48 drug tests revealed unusually high, but not quite illegal, levels of the drug? They launched an internal inquiry, never told anyone who had tested positive (Greg Rusedski outed himself and Bohdan Ulihrach’s name had been published after he was found guilty of taking the steroid and then exonerated when the ATP back pedalled), and then quietly turned out the light and closed the door on the case in the hope that everyone would forget that it had ever happened.

Then there was the development of the integrity unit, the ATP’s instant response to the betting and match fixing crisis that blew up in the summer of 2007. Moving with the speed of setting custard, the ATP’s new moral watchdogs demanded at the start of 2009 that the players sign a piece of paper to prove that they would be good boys in future. This, clearly, would protect them when the thugs employed by illegal betting syndicates tried to get them to throw matches.

Federer, though, has been a little more forthright. He is sick and tired of being dragged into a mess that is not of his making. Forstmann may be a big cheese at the Fed’s management company, but he is not Fed’s hands-on agent – and if Forstmann wanted to throw away 40 grand, that was nothing to do with him.

“It’s disappointing that my name gets thrown around for something I have no control over,” Federer said. “So that’s a pity. I just think it’s a bad thing that people who might be closer to the game are betting on our sport. But you can’t control sometimes what other people do.”

But as if that were not bad enough, it seems that ATP cannot organise it own Christmas party properly. As Andy Roddick stumbled out of the BNP Paribas Masters, losing 7-5, 6-4 to Robin Soderling, he found himself at a bit of a loose end.

He was not too upset by the loss, but now that he is safely through to the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London, which start on November 21, he has just over a week to kill. The ATP, however, have requested that all eight players for the big, end-of-season jamboree turn up in England by next Wednesday.

“Considering the ATP sent out an e‑mail saying we had to be in London by Wednesday for whatever they pretty much want us to do, it doesn’t leave much time for me to get home and back now, does it?” Roddick harrumphed. “So not only do we have a week in between where we are kind of hanging out, apparently we’re available for you people [the media] for five days. They still want us there. If you ask nicely, we’ll be around. We can do coffee or something.”

You could see his point. Roddick, like everyone else, is hanging on by his fingertips until the off-season when he will get a bit of time off before he has to start his preparations for the Australian Open. At best, he will have five weeks to himself – and that is not enough. The thought of killing time in London, however pleasant that may be, does not come close to replacing an extra week at home. So, Roddick wondered, why not run the Tour Finals immediately after the Paris Masters?

“The point would be to make it cohesive so you kind of move through, one into the other,” he suggested, not unreasonably to the press. “And if you guys are getting one day, anyways, you could probably make that happen. I don’t think you need a week to prep your stories or whatever it may be.

“It would add, you know, 25, 30 per cent more to an off-season, so I think it would make sense. I’d rather have it that way. I don’t know what the other guys think.”

No doubt the ATP is, as we speak, readying itself for action and will stun the world with a statement some time before 2012.

Topics: Agate, Atp, Bloke, Breach Of Contract, Crime Against Humanity, Cringe, Federer And Nadal, Genghis Khan, High Horse, Innocent Time, Monty Python, Mr Forstmann, Naughty Boy, Paraphrase, Printing Inc, Rich As Croesus, Roger Federer, S Sports, Sports Bets, Ted Forstmann