Tennis has joined the sports suffering a personal crisis. While tennis players this week have had to contend with sweltering heat on court at the first Grand Slam of the year, the Australian Open, the sport’s governing bodies have been exposed to uncomfortable conditions of a more ethical nature. The tennis world has been rocked by allegations that the outcomes of matches have been predetermined by players paid to lose by betting syndicates. Even more worrying are the suggestions that the fixing has infiltrated even the highest level of the sport. One ex-player this week claimed that the results of certain ATP Masters events have been influenced by illegal betting syndicates from around the world.

Several top players at the Australian Open have played down the scale of the scandal. Andy Murray said that he had never heard of any such activity in the game, while Novak Djokovic stated that, while he had been approached on one occasion early in his career, there is “nothing happening at the top level”. The Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) also attempted to quash the claims, stating that “The TIU and the tennis authorities absolutely reject any suggestion that evidence of match-fixing has been suppressed for any reason.” Nevertheless, in a sport where the outcome can be determined by a careless double fault or a single errant shot, there are understandable concerns that this could rock tennis’ very foundations.

The European Sports Security Association declared that tennis was the sport most at risk from betting manipulation, both because of the ease with which one can lose a match, and the sheer extent of betting options that leading bookmakers offer. Punters can bet on anything from total games in a match to the outcome of individual points: an array of options that means that a player could fix only a handful of points and no-one would be any the wiser. The allegations arose as a result of a leak of documents to the BBC and Buzzfeed that mainly discussed events dating back to 2007, but one suspects that this is a scandal that has the potential to change the face of the sport for many years to come. Here’s hoping that the issue will be resolved before it descends into the mess which fixing made of cricket not too long ago.