Players involved in a mixed doubles match at the Australian Open said on Monday they were interviewed by the Tennis Integrity Unit after a newspaper reported it had attracted suspicious betting patterns.
According to The New York Times report, the gambling website Pinnacle Sports said it had received an unusual spike in bets for lukasz Kubot and Andrea Hlavackova to beat David Marrero and lara Arruabarrena, causing it to suspend betting before the teams played on Sunday.
All players identified in the newspaper report rejected any possibility of fixing in the match, which was won by Kubot and Hlavackova 6-0, 6-3.
Kubot said on Monday that the TIU had asked him and Hlavackova questions about the match, without offering any more details. He added, though, that he didn’t notice anything unusual on the court, saying “we give 100 percent of that match” and he believed his opponents “were trying 100 percent.”
Marrero and Arruabarrena rejected the allegations in an interview with the Times, with Marrero citing a knee injury for his team’s poor play. They were not available for comment on Monday.
The sport has been under intense scrutiny in the wake of reports published by BBC and BuzzFeed News saying tennis authorities have ignored widespread evidence of match-fixing involving 16 players who had been ranked in the top 50 over the past decade.
According to the newspaper, Pinnacle said it began seeing “a large amount of money” being wagered on Kubot and Hlavackova to win the match by a “small number of people” after it opened betting on Thursday, prompting it to suspend wagers and notify the police in Victoria state.