Hingis shame smashes open seedy side of tennis

SO ALL the Hollywood scriptwriters are on strike, eh?

Well, panic-stricken studio executives could do worse than turn to the scribe penning the latest plot twists in the tennis world.

Match-fixing allegations, incredible resurrections and even a drugs scandal — it would surely make for box office gold.

Rarely has there been a week of such high drama both on and off the court, and the headline act was undoubtedly Martina Hingis.

Rumours were rife the “Swiss Miss” was about to announce her second retirement from the game but no-one expected the bombshell to follow.

Even Sixth Sense director M Night Shyamalan would have scoffed at such a preposterous twist: squeaky-clean Martina Hingis a cocaine abuser?

The revelation marked a tragic end to a glittering career for one of the game’s all-time greats.

Of the various sub-plots to the Hingis revelations in the past week, the most dramatic must be the latest episode in the Nikolay Davydenko story.

Already under investigation by the ATP after a defeat in August which attracted suspicious betting patterns and having been fined for £1,000 “for a lack of best effort” in a recent loss in St Petersburg, the Russian took centre stage again at the Paris Masters.

In his third-round defeat to Marcos Baghdatis, the world number four was publicly humiliated by umpire Cedric Mourier, who ordered him to “try his best” after watching him serve 10 double faults.

Notwithstanding the near-impossibility of proving whether a player is trying or not, Davydenko would be an idiot were he to deliberately act in a suspicious manner while under investigation for match-fixing.

A far more plausible explanation for the 26-year-old’s recent malaise is the pressure he must be under to perform and avoid precisely the kind of accusation Mourier levelled at him.

In any other week, the sensational reemergence of David Nalbandian as one of the world’s best players would have taken top billing. The Argentinian played the tournament of his life to win the Paris Masters, beating Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, and haul himself up to ninth in the ATP Race.

In fact, it would not be an overstatement to say Nalbandian is currently the best player on the planet and the Masters Cup would be poorer for his absence.

It is often said tennis has lost all the characters that made it so popular in days gone by.

But who needs characters when who’ve got plotlines like these?