A Belgian anti-doping tribunal has suspended U.S. Open semifinalist Yanina Wickmayer for one year for allegedly failing to report her whereabouts to anti-doping officials three times.

The Flemish regional tribunal said in a statement issued Thursday that the minimum one-year sanction is “reasonable.” Tribunal spokesman Koen Uman says the suspension takes immediate effect, but can be appealed by Wickmayer.

The 18th-ranked Belgian has denied any wrongdoing and said on her Web site she planned to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The suspension came as a surprise to the prosecutor who only wanted a suspension issued. Someone may say the panel should learn the phrase ‘guilty till proven innocent’ but Wickmayer violated the rules three times not once.

Bottom line- I think she should be suspended but not for a whole year.

Tennis authorities are looking into a WTA Tour match involving U.S. Open finalist Caroline Wozniacki that apparently sparked bettors to pile money on her opponent when she was on the verge of losing in straight sets.

Wozniacki, a 19-year-old Dane ranked sixth in the world, retired from the first-round match at the Luxembourg Open with a hamstring injury on Wednesday while leading Anne Kremer of Luxembourg 7-5, 5-0.

Wozniacki’s father, Piotr, told his daughter at 3-0 in the second set to retire before winning because her injury would prevent her from playing in the next round. His comments, apparently spoken in his native Polish, were picked up by microphones and heard by viewers watching the match on the Internet.

“I went onto the court and said to her: ‘Caro, it does not matter whether it’s going to be 5-0, 4-1 or 3-2. You can not play the next round, so you shouldn’t take the risk,” Piotr Wozniacki said Thursday on Danish radio. “I’m very proud of Caroline, because she stopped the fight and gave her opponent a chance.”

The father’s comments during the match led to a surge in online bets for Kremer to win.

The governing bodies of tennis created a Tennis Integrity Unit last year to combat gambling and match-fixing.

Without making any kind of judgment in Ms. Wozniacki’s case, I will suggest that what happened in Luxembourg be thoroughly investigated and in a open fashion. This is not the first recent allegation that a tennis match may not have been kosher or there was large sums of money bet at suspicious times on it. The integrity of professional tennis could be at stake if the sports fans come to believe results are being rigged.

Serena Williams is likely to find out whether she will be further punished for her outburst at a line judge at the U.S. Open before the end of the year, WTA chief executive Stacey Allaster said on Saturday.

The Australian Open and Wimbledon champion was fined $10,000 for the verbal attack on the official during the semifinals at Flushing Meadow last month.

Williams still faces possible exclusion from future grand slam events after a further review by the Grand Slam Committee, which oversees the four major tournaments in tennis.

“First of all, I’d like to say I think Serena is a fantastic champion and a great person,” Allaster told reporters at the China Open.

“She has acknowledged the incident in New York as being a mistake, and something that she’s not proud of, and she’s apologized for that.

“That is under investigation, it is ongoing. … it would be safe to assume that they will make a decision before year-end.

In case you haven”t seen last month’s incident, here is the video.

As for what Stacey Allaster said, it was very vague. IMHO the WTA would be more than justified in giving Serena Williams a multi-tournament suspension. Her behavior towards the judge was a disgrace to the sport.

It was her first tennis triumph since April 200Maria Sharapova won her first tournament since returning from a 10-month injury layoff when Jelena Jankovic retired because of an arm injury in the first set of the Toray Pan Pacific final Saturday.

Sharapova was up 5-2 at Ariake Colosseum when the seventh-seeded Serb took a timeout to have her right arm examined by the trainer. Jankovic returned to the court and lost the first two points of the eighth game before retiring.

“It’s disappointing,” said Sharapova, who had arthroscopic surgery to repair a rotator cuff in her right shoulder nearly a year ago. “It’s toward the end of the year and there are a lot of injuries so I wish Jelena a speedy recovery.”

Sharapova seems to like playing in Japan. She also won this tournament in 2006 and won the Tokyo Open in 2003.

This win makes it look hopeful for Sharapova returning to her pre rotator cuff surgery form.

Japan’s Kimiko Date Krumm became the oldest winner of a WTA Tour tournament since Billie Jean King in 1983, beating second-seeded Anabel Medina Garrigues of Spain 6-3, 6-3 for the Korea Open title Sunday.

Date Krumm turns 39 on Monday. King was 39 years, 7 months, 23 days when she won at Birmingham, England.

“Yeah, of course, very happy,” Date Krumm said. “I realized one more time after this game that we don’t know about tennis unless we actually play it.”

The title was Date Krumm’s first in 13 years and eighth of her career. Formerly ranked No. 4 in the world, she quit tennis in 1996 before returning last year.

She beat top-seeded Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-4 in the quarterfinals and defending champion Maria Kirilenko of Russia 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 in the semifinals.

After needing only 1 hour, 27 minutes to beat Medina Garrigues, Date Krumm ran to the stands to embrace her race driver husband, Michael Krumm of Germany.

“Above all, my husband’s love was a big help for my win,” she said.

*****

Date Krumm won her last WTA title in August 1996, beating Spain’s Arantxa Sanchez Vicario at San Diego.

Krumm says she is confident about playing pro tennis for at least a few more years. I am less than confident she return to her mid 1990’s form. Still I congratulate Krumm on her win.

Serena Williams’ U.S. Open title defense ended in bizarre, ugly fashion Saturday night, when she was penalized a point on match point after yelling and shaking her racket in the direction of an official who called a foot fault.

Williams lost to unseeded, unranked Kim Clijsters 6-4, 7-5 in a taut semifinal that featured plenty of powerful groundstrokes by both women. No one will remember a single shot that was struck, though, because of the unusual, dramatic way it finished.

With Williams serving at 5-6, 15-30 in the second set, she faulted on her first serve. On the second serve, a line judge called a foot fault, making it a double-fault — a call rarely, if ever, seen at that stage of any match, let alone the semifinals of a Grand Slam tournament.

Complete Results

Need the scores from any match played at the U.S. Open today? Results

That made the score 15-40, putting Clijsters one point from victory.

Instead of stepping to the baseline to serve again, Williams went over and shouted and cursed at the line judge, pointing at her and shaking a ball at her.

Dropping the f-word liberally, Williams said, “I swear to God I’m [expletive] going to take this [expletive] ball and shove it down your [expletive] throat, you hear that? I swear to God.”

The line judge was called over to the chair umpire, and tournament referee Brian Earley joined in the conversation. With the crowd booing — making part of the dialogue inaudible — Williams then went over and said to the line judge: “Sorry, but there are a lot of people who’ve said way worse.” Then the line judge said something to the chair umpire, and Williams responded, “I didn’t say I would kill you. Are you serious? I didn’t say that.” The line judge replied by shaking her head and saying, “Yes.”

Williams already had been given a code violation warning when she broke her racket after losing the first set. So the chair umpire now awarded a penalty point to Clijsters, ending the match.

Williams behavior was very unsportsmanlike. I don’t think the penalty point was unwarranted at all.

Watch what you tweet.

That’s the message tennis authorities are delivering as the U.S. Open gets set to start Monday, telling players and their entourages to be careful about what they post on the social networking site Twitter.

Signs are being posted in the players’ lounge, locker rooms and referee’s office at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center with the header: “Important. Player Notice. Twitter Warning.”

The signs, written by the Tennis Integrity Unit, point out that Twitter messages could violate the sport’s anti-corruption rules.

“Many of you will have Twitter accounts in order for your fans to follow you and to become more engaged in you and the sport — and this is great,” the notices read. “However popular it is, it is important to warn you of some of the dangers posted by Twittering as it relates to the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program Rules.”

Sports leagues and governing bodies are paying close attention as more and more athletes turn to Twitter to reach fans directly; some NFL teams, for example, urged players not to use it. But tennis appears to be the first sport openly concerned about Twitter’s possible effect on gambling.

Based on stories like this and this, there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about gambling on tennis matches and the possibility the sport could have its integrity compromised. Inside information, like whether a player is nursing a minor injury, would be valuable to gamblers.

The signs at the U.S. Open say tweeting is not allowed on court during matches. They also warn about using Twitter away from the court, saying sending “certain sensitive information concerning your match or other matches and/or players should be avoided. Depending on the information sent out this could be determined as the passing of ‘inside information.”

The messages define that as “information about the likely participation or likely performance of a player in an event or concerning the weather, court conditions, status, outcome or any other aspect of an event which is known by a Covered Person and is not information in the public domain.”

The warnings say they apply to players, coaches, agents, family members and tournament staff.

Do Tennis authorities have the right to enforce twitter rules on anyone but players and tournament staff? Rather than setting rules on what and what can’t be tweeted, the sport is probably hoping people just be prudent about what they tweet.

Defending champion Rafael Nadal withdrew from Wimbledon on Friday because of tendinitis in his knees.

He is the first reigning Wimbledon men’s champion to not defend the title since Goran Ivanisevic in 2002 — and only the second in the last 35 years. The grass-court Grand Slam tournament begins Monday.

“I’m just not 100 percent,” the No. 1-ranked Nadal said during a news conference at the All England Club. “I’m better than I was a couple of weeks ago, but I just don’t feel ready.”

His announcement came about 2½ hours after he lost to Stanislas Wawrinka in an exhibition match on grass at the Hurlingham Club in south London.

“Today was the last test,” Nadal said. “I didn’t feel terrible but not close to my best.”

There will be other Wimbledons for Nadal to take a crack at. I think he made the right decision for 2009.

Former Australian Open champion Thomas Johansson is quitting professional tennis after more than 15 years on the ATP tour.

The 34-year-old Swede won nine singles titles and reached a top ranking of No. 7 in 2002. Injuries forced him to take long breaks from the game in recent years.

“After a lot of thinking, I have now decided to step off the train and end my professional tennis career,” he said in a statement Friday. “During the fall I had to go through yet another operation after a foot injury and a month ago I became a dad for the second time.”

Johansson, who made his ATP debut in Bolzano, Italy, in 1993, said the biggest moments of his career were winning the 2002 Australian Open title and reaching the Wimbledon semifinals in 2005. He was also part of Sweden’s Davis Cup-winning team in 1998 and won an Olympic silver medal in doubles in Beijing last year with Simon Aspelin.

In March, Johansson was knocked out in qualifying for the Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne, Fla. Earlier that month, he beat Harel Levy, but lost to Dudi Sela as Sweden was defeated 3-2 by Israel in a Davis Cup quarterfinal.

All athletes come to a point in their career when they must decide if they are no longer competitive and should therefore retire. Some have trouble recognizing their skills aren’t what they used to be, and the late stages of their career become almost joke like. Johnansson looks like he is getting out at the right time. I wish him well in retirement.

Roger Federer beat Robin Soderling, tied Pete Sampras and won the French Open at last.

Undeterred by an on-court intruder, Federer defeated surprise finalist Soderling 6-1, 7-6 (1), 6-4 on Sunday to complete a career Grand Slam and win his 14th major title, matching Sampras’ record.

“It’s maybe my greatest victory, or certainly the one that removes the most pressure off my shoulders,” Federer said. “I think that now and until the end of my career, I can really play with my mind at peace, and no longer hear that I’ve never won Roland Garros.”

On his fourth try in Paris, Federer became the sixth man to win all four Grand Slam championships.

Even without a French Open win, Federer had already proved himself to be one of Tennis’ greatest players. Today’s win just closes the deal.

Why were the clay courts of Roland Garros such a mystery to Federer? He isn’t from the United States after all. Only three Americans men(Michael Chang, Jim Courier, and Andre Agassi) have won the French Open since 1956. With Federer, in light of how he lost three consecutive years in the finals, it may have been a case of wanting something too much.

Australia will not send its Davis Cup team to India for next month’s tie because of security concerns, Tennis Australia (TA) said on Saturday, leaving the country facing a year-long ban and a substantial fine.

The ITF, in a statement on the Davis Cup Web site, declared India the winner by forfeit and said it regretted TA’s decision. India advances to the next round of the World Group playoffs, in September.

“The Davis Cup Committee in due course will decide any sanctions to be assessed against Australia according to the regulations of the 2009 competition,” the statement said.

Under Davis Cup rules, TA now could be banned from the competition for 12 months and face a substantial fine.

Any future sanctions or ban inflicted on Australia has been earned. If a country wants to compete in these world-wide competitions, they can’t be the ones to determine who, how, and where the matches are to be played.

In light of this controversy, and the recent Sweden-Israel match that was closed to the public it might be time to play the Davis Cup matches on a less regular basis. Do they really need to be played every year? The Olympic Games are held every four, the Ryder Cup every two years. Every other year seems sufficient to me for the Davis Cup.

The Swedish tennis federation was fined $25,000 on Thursday and the city of Malmo banned from hosting Davis Cup matches for five years because of the decision to play Israel behind closed doors.

The Davis Cup Committee also said Sweden will lose its choice of venue if a similar situation happens again, and the country will be required to guarantee that future matches will be open to the public.

Sweden hosted Israel last month in the first round of the Davis Cup, losing 3-2. The best-of-five series was played behind closed doors because city officials said they couldn’t guarantee security at the venue. Critics, including the Israeli team, said Malmo was caving in to threats of violence from anti-Israel groups.

“The committee strongly condemned the decision by the city government of Malmo to refuse to allow spectators to attend the matches and the resultant fact that the Swedish Tennis Association played the tie behind closed doors,” the committee said in a statement.

If Sweden don’t have the courage to stand up to thugs, they shouldn’t be hosting these matches. By keeping fans out, the event’s organizers capitulated and Tennis was the loser from this.

Maria Sharapova is returning to the WTA Tour this week, ending her injury absence of more than seven months by playing doubles at an event in Indian Wells, Calif.

Sharapova, who missed the last two Grand Slam tournaments with a right shoulder injury, will compete in doubles for the first time in nearly four years, teaming with Elena Vesnina.

What the three-time major champion isn’t yet ready to do is play singles, according to her Web site.

“I am excited to be playing competitive tennis again,” Sharapova said in a posting on her site. “The healing process takes time, and requires things to move more slowly than I would like, but I am taking things one step at a time.”

Sharapova has not played competitively since pulling out of a tournament in Montreal in late July after winning a nearly three-hour match in which she double-faulted 17 times. The right-hander was examined by a trainer midway through the three-set victory, and she withdrew from the tournament before her next match.

Medical tests later found a torn rotator cuff tendon in the Russian’s shoulder.

In addition to missing last year’s U.S. Open and this year’s Australian Open, Sharapova also pulled out of an indoor event in Paris and a hard-court tournament in Dubai last month.

The joint ATP-WTA tournament in Indian Wells begins Wednesday.

The Sun-Sentinel reports Sharapova will play in the upcoming Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne Florida. It’s good to see her back, and I’m sure alot of male tennis fans wills second what I say.(I hardly follow tennis myself)

Israeli tennis player Andy Ram will be allowed to play in a premier Dubai tennis tournament after the Arab country said it would permit the No. 7-ranked doubles player to enter the country.

The Persian Gulf country banned Israeli women’s tennis star Shahar Peer earlier this week from entering the UAE to participate in the lucrative Dubai Tennis Championships. Organizers said they feared fan anger over Israel’s recent military offensive in the Gaza Strip would spill into riots in the Arab country if Peer were to play.

After Peer was barred, the tennis world harshly criticized the UAE for its ban of Israelis, and top past and present women players also came to Peer’s defense, including Billie Jean King.

Tennis governing officials warned that future tennis events in Dubai could be in doubt if the Emirates, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, continued to ban Israelis. And the ATP, which runs the men’s tournament, gave the Emirates a Friday evening deadline to decide whether to grant Ram a visa.

ATP president Adam Helfant described the Emirates’ decision at the “right” one.

Do I proofread for ESPN by any chance? I make typos like ‘at the right one’ rather than ‘as the right one’ and nobody is paying me to right this stuff.

Back to tennis. The UAE made the right decision for Ram, but it doesn’t let them off the hook so far as what they did to Peer. It’s too late to correct it, because the women’s tennis event is underway as I write this. There should be some form of punishment for what was done, but I’m still skeptical anything will happen worse than a wrist slap.

Sweden and Israel will play their first-round Davis Cup match in an empty arena next month because of security concerns.

Several anti-Israeli demonstrations are planned during the best-of-five series, which will be played March 6-8 at the 4,000-seat Baltic Hall.

Malmo officials announced the decision afterg a vote on the issue in the city’s recreational committee. The Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Left Party won the vote 5-4 after a long debate.

The committee said it could not guarantee security for the fans.

“It’s a high-risk match,” committee chairman Bengt Forsberg was quoted as saying by Swedish news agency TT.

High risk from what? Hysteria? This website claims Sweden has stricter gun laws than the US and a lower homicide rate.

Only officials, some sponsors and journalists will be allowed to enter the arena.

Journalists can be trusted never to be violent…..Oops.

*****

This will be the second time a Davis Cup match will be played in an empty arena in Sweden. In 1975, two years after a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet against the elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende, Sweden played Chile in Bastad and no spectators were allowed.

History always repeats itself. I have written three Tennis posts in less than a week. What’s next? Another post about figure skating?