Sport is made for betting

And they're off at Roland Garros. Here are my previews from PuntingAce Scott Ferguson's French Open Previews Good luck!

Oh good grief, the ATP really are clueless.... The ATP men's tennis tour may ban 15 professional gamblers from attending tournaments after finding they were placing bets on site to exploit a 20-second delay in scores being received by bookmakers, a tournament director said. Full article here 20 second delay? Even Eurosport's not that bad. The delay on SkySports is 4-5 seconds at most, and fairly standard with most networks. Free-to-air TV is significantly faster, particularly on an analogue signal. Any bookmaker with a clue tests the latency of broadcast pictures, it's pretty obvious when you are 10 seconds or more behind because punters only want to back the same thing.

Belgian court tells French Tennis Federation to move into the 21st century and accept the fact that 99.9% of gambling is perfectly legitimate. In what has to go down as one of the most ridiculous court cases in modern times, a Belgian court has thrown out the FTF's claims that betting was bringing down the reputation of tennis, and in particular, the French Open. The FTF had sought to ban Betfair, Bwin and Ladbrokes from betting on this year's tournament. Shame the FTF couldn't work out that having players such as Sesil Karatantcheva and Mariano Puerta fail dope tests, and having the ignorant local crowd jeer most players who aren't French does a lot more damage to the tournament's reputation that a recreational pastime that makes claycourt tennis a lot more exciting for a very significant portion of the viewing audience. Read the Guardian article here .