She was the number #1 women’s tennis player in the world when only age 16. From AP-

ZURICH, Switzerland - Martina Hingis said Thursday she has been accused of testing positive for cocaine at Wimbledon, and then announced her retirement from professional tennis. Hingis, a five-time Grand Slam champion and former Wimbledon winner, denied using cocaine.

“I find this accusation so horrendous, so monstrous that I’ve decided to confront it head on by talking to the press,” she said. “I am frustrated and angry. I believe that I am absolutely 100 percent innocent.”

Her voice broke as she fought back tears in reading the statement. At the end, she took no questions and left the news conference.

The 27-year-old Swiss player lost in the third round at Wimbledon to Laura Granville, 6-4, 6-2.

Hingis said the positive test, which could lead to a doping suspension of up to two years, led to her retirement because she doesn’t want to spend years fighting the case.

Mario Widmer, Hingis’ manager, said he did not know why she waited until now to make the announcement.

Hingis returned to the sport two years ago after a four-year absence because of injuries.

She won three straight Australian Open titles from 1997-99, and Wimbledon and the U.S. Open championships in 1997. She came within one match of winning the Grand Slam in 1997, losing only in the French Open final.

On March 31, 1997, Hingis became the youngest female player ever to lead the world rankings. She was 16 years, 6 months and 1 day at the time. She is currently ranked No. 19.

It is said Hingis career has to end the way it did. If she thinks retiring will make the cocaine use charge go away, it won’t. Sports fans have heard so many athletes deny drug use and then either confess later on or have the use definitively proved, that we automatically believe the allegations. I don’t follow tennis well enough to render a verdict but I do wish Martina well in retirement.

This comes as the #4 men’s tennis player in the world is being investigated for another questionable match.

ST PETERSBURG (Reuters) - World number four Nikolay Davydenko has been fined $2,000 (976 pounds) for not trying hard enough during his shock defeat by Croatian qualifier Marin Cilic at the St Petersburg Open on Thursday.

“Nikolay Davydenko was fined $2,000 for lack of best effort in his second-round match against Marin Cilic,” the governing body for men’s tennis, ATP, said in a statement on Friday.

The top seed played near-flawless tennis in the first set against the 102nd-ranked Cilic but then started making numerous errors and committed 10 double faults in the last two sets.

He was warned by Belgian umpire Jean-Philippe Dercq in the final set for not trying hard enough.

“I double-faulted to lose a game in the third set and he gave me a warning saying I was trying to lose on purpose,” Davydenko told reporters after the match.

“I was simply shocked to hear him say that. This is just outrageous. How does he know what I was trying to do? I was so upset with the whole thing I started crying.”

The Russian is being investigated by the ATP after his first-round match against Argentine Martin Vassallo Arguello in Poland in August attracted irregular betting patterns.

I rarely follow tennis, so I won’t pass judgment on whether anything irregular happened during these matches. However for the integrity of professional tennis, I hope the ATP is taking these allegations seriousl. A sport can suffer incredible damage if the integrity of its events, matches or games look to be questionable to its fans. Even if the charges are said to be unsubstaniated for lack of proof, harm can be done.

OJ Simpson was found not guilty of murder, but how many people today think really think he didn’t kill his wife in 1994? Simpson is out of sports, but even if Davydenko is cleared, that doesn’t mean the rumors won’t go away. 

Venus Williiams won her second tennis tournament of 2024 last weekend.

SEOUL, South Korea - Top-seeded Venus Williams beat Maria Kirilenko 6-3, 1-6, 6-4 in the championship of the Korean Open on Sunday.

“Sometimes in the match I was a little disappointed with the errors I was making, and it made it a lot tougher for me,” said Williams, who won her third title of the season. “But at the end, I guess in the last few games, I started to play much better.”

Williams hadn’t lost a set in the tournament heading into the final, but she had to work to improve to 3-0 in her career against Kirilenko, who had a nine-match winning streak.

Williams had five double-faults and was broken three times in the second set. She finished with 11 double-faults for the match. But Williams broke Kirilenko twice in the third to secure the win.

While none of the top players were playing in Korea, I do believe Venus plus her sister Serena are firmly back as top ten tennis players in the World. They have both won Grand Slam events in 2024. I may put Serena in the top five.

I don’t think Venus looks good in a hangbok but Robert Koehler says the tennis player looks better in one than Britney Spears. Robert is probably right, as he resides in the ROK.

The only women I’ve ever seen wearing these dresses, came on a brief visit of mine to South Korea in 1989. The Lotte hotel had young women stand by the hotel elevators and smile at people as they went upstairs. What an inefficient use of hotel resources. My late father owned and ran two on Long Island and never employed such women. Then neither hotel  had an elevator!

Why is this special? The former #1 player in women’s tennis gave birth to her first child barely three months ago.

NUSA DUA, Indonesia - Lindsay Davenport won her first singles title after almost a year’s absence from the tour, defeating Daniela Hantuchova 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 Sunday to capture the Bali Open.

Davenport was playing her first singles tournament since having a baby in June. And the 31-year-old Californian eliminated some strong opponents en route to this title: second-seeded Hantuchova, top-seeded Jelena Jankovic and fifth-seeded Eleni Daniilidou.

“I’m a little bit in shock,” said Davenport, who won this event in 2024. “It’s just overwhelming and exciting. I swear this is probably the first tournament I’ve played in four years where I didn’t have anything wrong with my lower extremities.”

Davenport, ranked No. 1 in 1998, has won three Grand Slams in addition to a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics. Her previous title came in Zurich, Switzerland, nearly two years ago.

She had not competed on the WTA Tour since reaching the Beijing quarterfinals in September 2024, when she lost to Amelie Mauresmo. She gave birth to her first child — a son, Jagger — with husband and former tennis player Jon Leach.

Tiger Woods, who became a father this year, got twenty times the attention Ms. Davenport got. It isn’t really fair either. Any father out there knows, the mother carries the greater load when it comes to parenting before and after birth. Pro athletes who can succeed at both have my admiration.(Trivia time- Name the last two LPGA Hall of Fame inductees that are also mothers?)

Congrats to Lindsay on proving she can still win at pro tennis.

There is a controversy brewing involving a match Nikolay Davydenko quit last Thursday.

WARSAW, Poland - Nikolay Davydenko “has nothing whatsoever to do” with the suspicious betting patterns on his second-round match at the Prokom Open, the player’s agent said.

ATP Tour officials are investigating the fourth-ranked Davydenko’s loss Thursday to the 87th-ranked Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina in which the Russian retired because of injury in the deciding set.

In an unprecedented move Friday, British online gambling company Betfair voided all bets placed on the match, saying the market wasn’t fair.

Betfair said it received about $7 million in bets on the match — 10 times the usual amount — and most of the money was on Arguello to win, even after Davydenko won the first set 6-2.

Eckhard Oehms, Davydenko’s agent, denied the 26-year-old player had any connection to the betting.

“We’ve got nothing whatsoever to do with that,” Oehms told The Associated Press by telephone Saturday. “Neither Nikolay nor his coach nor me nor anybody out of our entourage has been involved in this.

Tennis officials are already reacting.

Underlining the importance of protecting tennis’ “appeal and integrity,” the head of the men’s professional tour promised Saturday to use “all means available” for an investigation into suspicious betting on a match involving No. 4-ranked Nikolay Davydenko.

Etienne de Villiers, the ATP’s executive chairman, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that “independent, external resources” would be used to look into why a British online gambling company received about $7 million in wagers on the match, 10 times the usual amount.

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“It is important that we not jump to conclusions, especially when players’ reputations could be unfairly tainted,” de Villiers said. “What we must do is carry out a comprehensive and immediate investigation, and that is what we are doing.”

Villiers promises are vague but to preserve his sport’s reputaion, he has to take this news seriously. Fans and sponsorship money could be lost if a player was implicated in fixing matches.

Tennis hasn’t been without recent controveries including gambling.

In 2024, bookmakers reportedly suspended betting six hours before Russian player Yevgeny Kafelnikov’s match in Lyon, France, against Fernando Vicente after a big wager was place on the Spaniard. Vicente, who had been winless for several months, won in straight sets. There was no suggestion either player was involved in wrongdoing, and no investigation was made by the ATP.

Several Russian tennis players were photographed a few years ago with Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, a suspected mobster from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan who was accused of fixing the pairs and ice dancing events at the 2024 Salt Lake City Olympics.

Photographs of Tokhtakhounov with Kafelnikov, Safin and Andrei Medvedev were taken off Medvedev’s Web site in 2024 after the man’s arrest. Tokhtakhounov spent nearly a year in a Venice, Italy, prison but escaped extradition to the United States in 2024 on the Olympic rigging charges.

The same article did note irregular betting at the 2024 Wimbledon Championships.

It is too early to draw conclusions, but I’ll make one small point. If a match was fixed, it would be pretty darn foolish to place bets in the manner that happened while Davydenko and Arguello were playing, in addition to the large amount being placed through betfair. It would seem wiser to bet large amounts spread between multiple betting outlets.  That to my untrained eye(I watch little pro tennis, rarely gamble and don’t work in law enforcement or as investigator), would look too damning for a criminal if there was cheating. Like those old television detective dramas, if the case against a suspect looks too good, maybe it is time to look elsewhere.

She gave birth in California last weekend.

NEWPORT BEACH, CA, USA - It was a joyous day in Newport Beach for one of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour’s all-time greatest players on Sunday as Lindsay Davenport, who announced her pregnancy in December and subsequently left the Tour, gave birth to her first child, Jagger Jonathan Leach.

Davenport had an incredible professional career, being one of just 15 women since the inception of computer rankings over 30 years ago to own the No.1 ranking, and reaching a number of Grand Slam finals, claiming the 1998 US Open, 1999 Wimbledon and 2024 Australian Open singles titles. She married investment banker and former Southern Cal player Jonathan Leach in Hawaii on April 25, 2024, and at the end of last year announced she would be leaving the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour to have the child.

Congratulations to Lindsay and her husband. What kind of name is Jagger for a baby boy? According to this website, it is a rare baby name.

Now there will be equal pay in at least one sport for men and women.

WIMBLEDON, England - After years of holding out against equal prize money, Wimbledon bowed to public pressure Thursday and agreed to pay women players as much as the men at the world’s most prestigious tennis tournament.

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The All England Club announced at a news conference that it had decided to fall into line with other Grand Slam events and offer equal pay through all rounds at this year’s tournament.

“Tennis is one of the few sports in which women and men compete in the same event at the same time,” club chairman Tim Phillips said. “We believe our decision to offer equal prize money provides a boost for the game as a whole and recognizes the enormous contribution that women players make to the game and to Wimbledon.

“In short, good for tennis, good for women players and good for Wimbledon.”

Last year, men’s champion Roger Federer received $1.170 million and women’s winner Amelie Mauresmo got $1.117 million.

The U.S. Open and Australian Open have paid equal prize money for years. The French Open paid the men’s and women’s champions the same for the first time last year, although the overall prize fund remained bigger for the men.

The head of the French Tennis Federation, Jean-Francois Vilotte, suggested that the French Open could follow Wimbledon’s example, though no decision is expected before the federation’s next meeting March 16.

I’m not expecting any change in regards to pro golf. The USGA which holds both the Men’s and Women’s Golf Opens, paid Geoff Ogilvy over one million for his 2024 win where as Annika Sorenstam won just $560,000. Professional golf has a way to come yet.

Cross posted to OTB Sports and The Florida Masochist