Leading article: Advantage tennis

One of the more surprising facts, among the many additions to the sum of human knowledge in today's Independent on Sunday, is that tennis attracts the third largest amount of money in betting, after football and racing. That is not part of the traditional image of Wimbledon, which opens tomorrow. But last year nearly half a billion pounds was staked on the tournament through one betting exchange alone. That makes it surprising that tennis has never had a big match-fixing scandal and that its reputation, and particularly that of its most prestigious competition, remains as white as freshly laundered cotton.

As we report today, the sport's ruling bodies have accepted the conclusion of a report by two former police officers that tennis is peculiarly vulnerable to corruption. Not only is it the third most bet-upon sport, but it is theoretically easier to fix matches than in, say, football, because a single player can determine the result.

There are several possible explanations as to why tennis has such a clean reputation. Either its players subscribe to a culture of sportsmanship that declined long ago, or never existed to the same degree, in football and racing. Or tennis players have been throwing matches all these years and getting away with it. Or, and this is surely the main reason, tennis has only recently become a big-money betting sport.

Racing has so long been associated with betting and with corruption that it has added words to the language, such as nobble, and a whole sub-genre to the shelves of popular fiction. By contrast, it is only now we learn that underperforming on purpose in tennis is called "tanking". Equally, no one suggests that match fixing is common in football, but allegations of corruption are persistent and the occasional proven cases stretch a long way back. The 1965 case of three Sheffield Wednesday players jailed for betting on their own team to lose to Ipswich Town still provokes arguments today.

The most celebrated case, that of Bruce Grobbelaar, the Liverpool goalkeeper, illustrates the problem that match-fixing can be as difficult to prove as insider trading. Grobbelaar was cleared in 1997 for lack of evidence; it was only when he unwisely sued The Sun for libel that he was found by the House of Lords to have "acted in a way in which no decent or honest footballer would act".

And the idea that some sports were too gentlemanly to be tainted by such dishonesty was dispelled eight years ago when Hansie Cronje, the South African cricketer, was banned for life for fixing – or, as he put it, "forecasting" – matches.

The world tennis authorities are to be commended, therefore, for the speed of their response to the one significant case of suspicious betting activity involving a top player. Bets of millions of dollars placed on a match played by Nikolay Davydenko, the Russian ranked fourth in the world, in Poland last August are still being investigated. However, there is no suggestion that Davydenko had any knowledge of those bets.

The investigation carried out for the sport's ruling bodies by Ben Gunn and Jeff Rees, former Scotland Yard detectives, suggested that 45 recent professional tennis matches had attracted suspicious bets. So it is wise for the authorities to tighten and standardise the rules – in particular to impose an obligation on players to report any improper approaches.

In giving such prominence to the risk of corruption in tennis on the eve of Wimbledon, we might be accused of being spoilsports. We disagree. Sport lifts the spirit and brings people together. Many millions are enjoying Euro 2008. Wimbledon has a hypnotic appeal that every year has us watching television with the curtains drawn as the sun shines.

But we should be realistic. We do not want to add "a peach of a backhander" to the stock of Wimbledon catchphrases. The joy of competitive sport for the spectator depends on the belief that the competitors are trying to win. If that belief is undermined by the suspicion that matches are being fixed, the life-enhancing quality of sport is sullied. So it is positive, rather than negative, to try to protect sports against the temptations of the vast sums that change hands – increasingly on the internet rather than in bookmakers' shops.

Part of Wimbledon's charm is the assumption of fair play – not all sports have succeeded in preserving spectators' confidence in good sportsmanship in the face of big money. Even if sportsmanship contains an element of myth, it is good myth to have. It does no harm, therefore, to believe that tennis is a more courtly business than other professional sports. But we should nevertheless applaud the efforts of the tennis authorities to preserve our innocence. As in all walks of life, true fulfilment can be achieved only if everyone believes that social rules are being observed.

Play.

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