Wimbledon Plays Court to New Rules

A crackdown on the possibility of players taking bribes to throw matches has been implemented this week with the beginning of the world's most prestigious tennis tournament, The Championships at Wimbledon.

New restrictions
The All England Club, which has run the grand-slam tournament since its establishment back in 1877, has implemented tougher restrictions on access to the players' locker rooms since the beginning of this year's tournament last Monday.

The restrictions come at the same time as the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which runs the men's game, along with the Womens' Tennis Association (WTA), look set to approve 15 recommendations from an independent panel on combating corruption in tennis. The four Grand Slams (Wimbledon, the US Open, the French Open and the Australian Open) and the International Tennis Federation are also expected to endorse the recommendations.

Punishments for involvement in match-fixing will be much stronger under the new guidelines, with possible life-bans and higher fines for transgressors. Players will be required to report any suspicious activity within 48 hours of being approached by gambling syndicates in relation to match-fixing.

Davydenko accused
The measures are particularly timely given that they have coincided with this year's Wimbledon tournament. Although most of the favorites made it safely through their first-round matches on Monday and Tuesday, fourth-seeded Russian Nicolay Davydenko - who is still under investigation by the sport's governing body after UK-based online bookmaker Betfair reported irregular betting patterns on a match from 2007 - received tricky questions from reporters after bowing out in straight sets on Tuesday to lowly-ranked German Benjamin Becker (no relation to German tennis legend Boris Becker).

In response to the allegations he threw the match against Argentine Martin Vassallo Arguello in Sopot, Poland, in August 2007, Davydenko said on Tuesday: "I spoke on the centre court with my wife in Russian (and) maybe it's possible, I say something (like), 'I don't want to play or I can retire'." He went on to say that because of the large presence of Russian fans at the match, somebody from the crowd could have misunderstood the connotations of what he had been saying.

Wimbledon 2008
The biggest shock of the 2008 Championships thus far occurred on Wednesday when world number three and 2008 Australian Open winner Nojak Djokovic of Serbia bowed out in straight sets in his second round match to 75th ranked Marat Safin of Russia, himself a former US Open (2000) and Australian Open (2005) winner.

The second round of the men's and ladies' singles continues today, with the third round set to begin tomorrow.