Leave it to tennis, and the ATP in particular. What began as a potential "Match-fixing on the ATP Tour" controversy has degenerated into a "Mis-quotation over Match-Fixing on the ATP Tour Controversy." The amount of ink that Murray's ill-chosen words have attracted is astonishing (he said "everyone" - meaning all the players - know that match-fixing goes on, a claim that was later denounced and repudiated by various ATP pros and administrators). And now comes the most bizarre episode of them all: Nikolay Davydenko, a principal in the match (at Sopot, Poland) that launched this entire match-fixing saga, has come down hard on Murray
You know, I'm not buying Kolya's indignation. Maybe this is what you get when you make the guy the model for a terracotta statue, although there is something appropriate about that curiously hagiographic exercise because (I think) those terracotta statues are hollow - kind of like those chocolate Easter bunnies that are such a disappointment when you're a child: What, you mean this 36-inch tall bunny contains just enough chocolate to be compacted into my one tiny fist? Thats like Terracotta Kolya.
I guess Kolya the No Longer Obscure felt entitled to step out and rip Murray a new one because - well, because of exactly what? Some guilt-driven conviction that Murray was tacitly saying that he - Nikolay Davydenko - fixed or played along with the fixing of that match in Sopot? Impossible. You can't ready anything like that into Murray's comments, although they do, in a roundabout way, presume a certain amount of guilt among ATP pros. But why would Kolya take that so (obviously) personally?
Oddly, Davydenko's clear implication that Murray may know more about gambling in tennis than he has let on - clearly, an example of table-turning at its best , or worst - is a far more accusatory charge than anyone has really leveled thus far at Davydenko. I mean, the guy really goes after Murray, whose biggest transgression seems to have been speaking without thinking, and portraying his own presumed assumptions as the ATP canon. Still, Davydenko's outrage seems like a curious over-reaction; to me, it comes off as extremely defensive - like, Whoa, hoss, why are you getting so worked up about this?
All of which would be fine if the Sopot issue were resolved, or if somehow it could be shown that there was no potential gain to Davydenko from being involved in the Sopot fix-scheme, if such a scheme did indeed exist. The circumstantial evidence doesn't exactly exonerate Davydenko, which is partly why such a strident attack on Murray seems ill-advised as well as strangely self-righteous.
It's pretty hard to read a great deal of emotion or psychology into a printed story, but does anyone else think there is, in general, something fundamentally passive-aggressive about Kolya? Or that something down deep must be bothering the little bad dude to lead him to lash out like that. Is Davydenko trying to position himself as some kind of outraged, aggrieved guardian of the game's integrity? That certainly would raise some eyebrows, if for no other reason than that in Davydenko's position, he might better just keep his mouth shut and wait for his good name to be cleared in the ongoing investigation into the Sopot incident.
This is really pretty baffling, but it isn't the first time Kolya has flummoxed us. He did it as recently as last Sunday, when he won the Kremlin Cup. Oh, I know that this wasn't the first time he won the event, although it did represent his first tournament win of the year. That it happened on what is - for any Russian - such a great occasion was somewhat surprising to me. Maybe I don't give Kolya enough credit, but he just doesn't seem the type to step up and successfully deal the pressure of performing at the highest level, in front of his home crowd, often against players who are lionized to a much higher degree by the Russians. You might expect an Andy Roddick, Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic to thrive under those circumstances, but --- Kolya?
There is more to it than that, too. Davydenko has a history of lording it over the players against whom he has been successful (and therefore entitled to feel confident), and folding up like a cheap pocket-knife when he's facing the big dogs, or even medium-sized dogs - at least those that are capable of biting, which leaves out Ivan Ljubicic at Grand Slams but includes Tommy Haas, who drubbed Kolya out of the Australian Open quarterfinals last year.The overall rap on Kolya is: steady but uninspired, talented but prone to stepping down rather than up when finding a way to win is imperative. He also seems to be saddled with a Small-Man Complex that perpetually leaves him feeling like he's getting hosed, like nobody appreciates him, like nobody cares, like. . . I'll show them all, one day!
Yet for all those shortcomings, he's won the Kremlin Cup three times, and don't be fooled - that event is not just a big deal in Moscow, it also offers the winner the bragging rights to the entire Russian tennis landscape. Kolya has now won it three times, which is two more times than his revered rival, Marat Safin.
Okay, so doing better than Safin at anything, tennis-wise, may not exactly earn you much in the way of bragging rights, but Davydenko's record in Moscow is surprising and impressive, and it does underscore the flip side of the Kolya argument, but may actually be more accurate and germane (but doesn't appeal to me as much): The guy gets the most out of a game that isn't quite good enough to beat the very top players; that is, he is to the top players what Andy Roddick has been to Roger Federer, and psychology, Small-Man Complex, and male-pattern baldness have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
I don't know, like other things about Davydenko, I just can't fully buy it.