philwrig wrote:

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There's no way Smethy would ever get involved in match fixing, endof !!!!!

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Agreed. 100%.

Ed takes full advantage of his LL place:

L32: (LL) Ed Corrie WR 532 defeated (ALT) Deiton Baughmann (USA) WR 403 by 2 & 4

This whole Dan Smeth, thing, dear me.

There is a generation, consisting of Rice, Smeth, Cox, Willis et al, whom probably should have all made better of their careers to be honest.

We should not even waste our breath, discussing them. The future is, Cam, Glassman and Edmund.

Decent doubles trip for Luke so far - shame his singles results have been a little disappointing on this trip.

Well done, Mr Corrie and the doubles team! Some very nice results.

Spectator wrote:

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Bob in Spain wrote:

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Good win for Liam and Luke, sealed with a big ace down the T. The guys win 6-1 7-6(3)

Bit concerned about Bambo's choice of shoes though. Didn't look like "team colours" to me

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He's not doing the two different coloured shoes thing, is he? Much though I admire the players, there are some sartorial decisions that I do not fully understand.

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Nail, head, hit.

Edit

Actually it is Liam doing the odd shoes routine and I think Bambo should have been wearing the "reverse pair".

-- Edited by Bob in Spain on Tuesday 15th of March 2016 08:30:01 PM

steven wrote:

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RJA wrote:

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Spectator wrote:

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I would guess that players are aware of the streaming arrangements on all courts before they play. But given that to the best of my knowledge nothing Mr Smethurst has ever said or done has suggested that he is a person of compromised integrity, I'd also prefer to assume that that's irrelevant.

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Prior to yesterday I would have completely agreed, it's just that having watched that set I can no longer say so with any confidence. He simply made no effort at all to win the set and I am not even sure that the illness line makes that much sense. What is the point of fighting back to win the second set only to give up from the first game of the third?

I am certainly not making accusations but I find it very disturbing.

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If you're ill and haven't got much energy, tanking the end of the 1st set so as to conserve energy for the 2nd, managing to get through the 2nd, maybe partly through an adrenaline high, then coming down from that high, feeling groggy at the start of the 3rd and realising that you can't win seems fairly plausible to me. You could ask why he didn't retire early in the 3rd in that case but looking at ITF, he has only retired from singles matches 7 times in nearly 10 years, so maybe he doesn't feel it's the honourable thing to do unless he absolutely has to because it's a sudden injury or he's throwing up on court, for example. In saying that, I'm assuming one retirement or fewer per year is well below average (unless you're Fed or Muzz!), though I haven't checked.

I realise that the way that match went might have made any of us suspicious if we were watching a player we were already suspicious of, but there can be so many reasons for matches going up and down like this that I'm always inclined to give players the benefit of any doubt unless any real evidence is produced. I have good and bad days, months, years (and even parts of days) too - I wouldn't want ups and downs like that to be taken as prima facie evidence that something sinister was going on!

I should add that obviously I accept that you weren't making accusations and that there has been a lot in the tennis news recently to make tennis fans err on the suspicious side.

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I accept that there are always possible explanations for things like this and I sincerely hope, and on balance believe, that there is one.

That being said anybody who says with certainty that X would never fix a match of Y would never do this are very naive. Most people who get involved in match fixing never intend to go down that route. The people behinds it are expert manipulators, they get a young guy to say something stupid on tape so they have a hold over them. They then get them to fix something really small like the first game of a match, promising the player that for this one little favour the incriminating tape recording will be gone. Of course at this point the player has passed the point of no return. They are completely compromised and have no way out because the threat of exposure is too great. It is very sad but good people sometimes end up trapped in this horrible situation.