You would have thought that after the furore surrounding the Albert Montanes v Martin Vassallo Arguello match in Poland, coming as it did immediately after Davydenko's effort the previous day, would have perhaps dissuaded Montanes from any questionable activity for a while. Not a chance and his match yesterday in New Haven with Teimuraz Gabashvili was every bit as dodgy as the other two.
Glancing, as is my wont, at the daily matches in the morning I recall that Gabashvili was a 1.4 favourite against Montanes, who was available at around 3.2.
Coming back to this match about ten minutes prior to its start, there had been a huge punt on Montanes, who was now 1.6 and Gabashvili was on the drift at 3.25. Sensing a fix, I dived on Montanes at 1.58 and soon enough, the Spaniard was down to 1.3 and this is all before the match had started.
Albert Montanes is the epitomy of a clay court specialist and his last match on hard was a straight sets defeat against an unknown Israeli in a Challenger in Spain in June. Prior to that, a first round defeat to Arnaud Clement in straight sets in Miami in March, a defeat to Tommy Haas in the first round of the Australian Open in January and the same result in the first round of the US Open last August against Hewitt are the only matches he has played on hard in a year!
This is why he was 3.25 in the morning against Gabashvili - because he's an awful hard court player and yet the match started and Montanes was 1.3 and the Russian 3.6.
The price contunued to tumble on Montanes and people were betting on a straight sets Montanes victory at 1.15 !!
Gabashvili was available at 10 when the Spaniard predictably won the first set and if you wanted Montanes, then 1.05 were the odds of reward. A disgrace and the Russian popped in six double faults just to make sure of a 4-6 4-6 defeat.
I won money on this match - not through talent, but through what appears to be a fixed result and I will be informing the ATP of yet another questionable match. Montanes reward is a second rounder with another player under suspicion in Igor Andreev and I'll be keeping a close eye on this one.
Elsewhere, as I predicted a while back, Tim Henman appears to be making the US Open his tournament swansong and this is a good decision from Tim, as his body can't take any more and he's at the end of the road anyway with just a couple of wins all year.
The former world number four has earnt me a few quid lately and I've enjoyed watching the Wimbledon circus each year, so best wishes to Tim for the future.
As far as competitive tennis matches were concerned yesterday, I made a few quid on Jose Acasuso, Mardy Fish and Luis Horna - the latter two in running, so it was a profitable day yesterday at New Haven. Fortunately for me I didn't get on Ancic outright, as he lost to Wawrinka in the first round and as far as match bets for today go, there's no stand-out wager amongst them, so I'll keep my money in my pocket today.
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