Would it have been so hard to give Nicolas Mahut a wild card into the US Open?

Dude played an 11-hour match, captivated the tennis world (and the sports world) for three days this summer and all he has to show for it is a small trophy and a lousy draw in Open qualifying? I know, I know, you can’t "earn" a wild card. It’s an arbitrary thing awarded to either big names down on their luck or local players who wouldn’t make the tournament otherwise. Mahut is neither. But, come on! Look at that scoreboard! The USTA couldn’t throw the Frenchman a bone?

The allotted wild cards all went to American players — James Blake, Donald Young, Ryan Sweeting and 18s national champion Jack Sock — and I have no problem with this. It’s our national tournament and our players should get special treatment. (France and Australia each get one wild card for their own players. Come to think of it, what’s up with that, France? You choose the No. 207 player in the world over Mahut?) But Mahut would get some attention and draw a crowd to the outer courts and isn’t that the point of the wild card? Just think, if Isner doesn’t play because of his ankle injury, neither of Wimbledon’s marathon men will play in New York.  

And with fifth-set tiebreaks in effect at the Open, organizers wouldn’t even have to worry about Mahut hogging a court for three days like he did in London.

LONDON (AP)—Former Top 60 player Daniel Koellerer and his manager, Manfred Nareyka, have been placed on two years’ probation because Koellerer’s personal website listed odds for matches and had links to sites for placing bets.

The Tennis Integrity Unit, the sport’s anti-corruption group, said Thursday that Koellerer and Nareyka “admitted” breaking rules about “facilitating betting.”

If found to violate anti-corruption rules in the next two years, Koellerer, a 27-year-old Austrian ranked 134th, would be fined about $19,000 and suspended for three months. Nareyka would be barred from access to tournaments for a year. Otherwise, the penalties would expire.

Koellerer was ranked 55th in 2009, when he reached the U.S. Open’s third round.

Game Point is Busted Racquet’s roundup of facts, figures and links from around the web.

Because Anna Wintour can only publish so many Roger Federer spreads, Vogue occasionally features other male tennis players on its hallowed pages. This month, Andy Murray gets the treatment, because if it’s one thing you think of when you think of Andy Murray, it’s fashion. In today’s Game Point, we take a look at some of the highlights from the piece, which you should definitely read in full.

Love — The writer, Vicki Woods, said she had to prod Murray to talk about clothes because he probably doesn’t "think about new trends in menswear all that much." Though it’s only August, I think we have our winner of understatement of the year.

15 — The Scot doesn’t have a tennis court at his new home in Surrey because it’s only 20 minutes from Wimbledon’s practice courts.

30 — David Beckham texts Andy Murray’s publicist to get updates on his Wimbledon matches. Guess he didn’t know about the Wimbledon iPhone app.

40 — Murray missed watching election-night coverage in Britain because he got a random drug test. He says he gets tested a lot because he lives in London and Miami, two places which have a lot of testers. Hmmm, can’t think of why there’d be a lot of drug testers in Miami. 

Game — This excerpt: "He must have black-tie gear in his wardrobe, though? ‘I don’t, no.’ But doesn’t he go to black-tie dinners and stuff after the Wimbledon tournament finishes? He says, ‘You do if you win.’ Right."

TORONTO (AP)—Andy Murray beat Roger Federer 7-5, 7-5 to defend his Rogers Cup title on Sunday.

The 23-year-old from Scotland overcame several rain delays to become the first man to repeat as champion since Andre Agassi in 1995. He beat world No. 1 Rafael Nadal in the semifinals.

“Winning a tournament is always great,” Murray said. “This is the first time I’ve beat Roger and Rafa in the same tournament, which is probably the most pleasing thing. And I didn’t drop a set against either of them—so it’s good for the confidence for the next few weeks.”

The players last met in the Australian Open final, an easy win for Federer that gave him 16 Grand Slam titles, most in tennis.

Rain delayed the start of the match by 15 minutes, and when play finally began, Murray seemed intent on blasting Federer from the stadium before fans could dry their seats, breaking Federer twice in the first 10 minutes.

“I thought he played well,” Federer said. “He wasn’t giving me much and he clutch-served at the very end when he had to. He deserved the victory.”

Federer’s last action before this tournament was his quarterfinal loss at Wimbledon. He even worked with a coach, American Paul Annacone, and declared he would “love to win another 10 Wimbledons, another five French Opens, an Olympic gold in London, a Davis Cup and whatever—you name it.”

After being held to only two points through the first two games on Sunday, Federer broke back to get to 3-1 and climbed all the way to 5-5 when Murray double-faulted his way to a break. But Federer lost his own serve before Murray served out.

Murray was on serve with Federer up 2-1 in the second set when another rain delay happened, this one more than 45 minutes. Murray held serve to level the second set at 2-2 when the chair umpire called the two men back to their umbrellas just moments after play resumed.

A storm rolled in just after 4 p.m., causing about an hour-long delay. Federer perked up briefly when play resumed, but eventually Murray’s serve was too much, and the Swiss superstar hit his final return long to end it.

“The rain delays completely kind of shut it down for me to get any kind of rhythm,” Federer said. “It was played at a couple of points here and there. It didn’t even feel like the end of the match, you know? All of the sudden, it was all over.”

The tournament had the top four players in the semifinals. Federer beat Novak Djokovic and Murray beat Rafael Nadal.

“I felt pretty good this week, and I prepared well for the tournament,” Murray said. “I just wanted to go for my shots more this week, you know, play the way that I felt like playing and it definitely worked.”

White and green won’t be the only colors at Wimbledon during the 2012 Olympics.

Officials at the All England Club announced Friday that they would relax the traditional all-white dress code when the tennis competition is held at the venue during the London Games. In a statement, chief executive Ian Ritchie stressed that the Olympics will be its own event and wouldn’t need to conform to the usual rules in place for Wimbledon.

Andre Agassi‘s weave must be turning over in its grave. If only Agassi had been born a few years later, he could have fulfilled his dream of wearing jorts and bright pink shirts on Centre Court of the most hallowed grounds in tennis.

White will continue to be the required color for Wimbledon and hopefuly it will stay that way so I don’t ever have to spend 45 minutes making an awful Photoshop illustration (above) again. Say what you will about Wimbledon’s pompous, self-righteous rules, but I like them. Sports are overrun by logos and advertisements and awful pop songs blaring during breaks in play. It’s nice to have two weeks a year where some semblence of tradition still remains.

In another de-stuffifying move, Wimbledon announced that the royal box will be replaced by an IOC "family" box during the Olympic tennis event. Eh, that still sounds pretty stuffy to me.

WIMBLEDON, England (AP)—Wimbledon is brightening its wardrobe for the 2012 Olympics.

Organizers of the venerable tournament said Friday the traditional all-white dress rule will be waived for the tennis competition at the London Games.

Players must wear predominantly white clothing during the Grand Slam event. But that will change for the Olympics, and All England Club chief executive Ian Ritchie said Wimbledon had no hesitation in loosening its rules.

“We have been very supportive to the Olympic organizers throughout the process,” he said. “We hope to some extent there will be a different type of audience. It is not a repeat of the Championships. It will be its own competition, have its own style and it will play out in its own way.”

Among other changes, the Royal Box on Centre Court will be filled with the International Olympic Committee “family,” instead of the assorted royalty and dignitaries who congregate there during Wimbledon.

Only 12 of the available 17 courts will be required, meaning crowd capacity will be 26,000, down from 40,000 during the championships.

One tradition, however, will remain: no scheduled night sessions. Play will begin at 11 a.m. local time, and is expected to continue until about 8 p.m. As is the case during Wimbledon, play could carry on under the roof on Centre Court if circumstances demand.

The Olympic tennis event is set to begin July 28, 2012 — 20 days after the end of the Grand Slam tournament.

The All England Club last week made assurances that the grass courts would be resurfaced in time following a successful test this year.

Debbie Jevans, London 2012 director of sport and venues, said Friday that organizers were confident there still would be an appetite for tennis at Wimbledon such a short time later.

“There will be a lot of people who do not get tickets for the Championships,” she said. “It gives them the chance to see the best players in the world.”

The 2012 Olympic tennis event will be the first to include mixed doubles, meaning there will be five gold medals up for grabs at Wimbledon.

The singles events will be played over three sets, except for the men’s final, which will be best-of-five.

Spain’s Rafael Nadal won the gold medal in men’s singles in Beijing four years ago. Roger Federer teamed with Stanislas Wawrinka to win the men’s doubles for Switzerland.

Among the women, Elena Dementieva of Russia won the singles, and American sisters Venus and Serena Williams captured the doubles.

Tickets for the 2012 Olympic tournament go on sale next year.

LONDON (AP)—Roger Federer has set himself a target of reaching at least 20 Grand Slam titles before he retires.

The 29-year-old Swiss took his tally to 16 with a victory at the Australian Open earlier this year, but he failed to get beyond the quarterfinals at either the French Open or Wimbledon and has dropped to No. 3 in the world rankings, his lowest position since November 2003.

However, despite his recent form, Federer told the BBC that winning 20 majors is a realistic aim.

“I believe that having won three Grand Slams per season three times, and two per year a couple of times, it’s something doable for me,” he said. “I only play 16-20 tournaments per year, so I’m not overplaying, and that keeps the fire burning.”
 
Federer, who is regarded by many as the greatest ever player, overtook Pete Sampras’ record of 14 Grand Slam titles at Wimbledon in 2009. By winning the French Open a month earlier, he became only the sixth man in history to win a career Grand Slam.

But his aura of invincibility has faded in recent months: he has not won a title of any kind since the Australian Open, and his quarterfinal loss to Tomas Berdych at Wimbledon marked the first time he failed to make the final at the All England Club since 2002.

Federer, who is married with 1-year-old twin daughters, denied his motivation had waned.

“I’m giving 100 percent for each and every tournament that I play because I don’t play a ton of tournaments,” he said. “Tournaments like Toronto this week and Cincinnati next week are important to me, too. The motivation is huge for the next few years and obviously if I can win Grand Slams that’s fantastic, but they are not the only motivation over the next few years.”

However, Federer did admit that his body requires more attention than it used to.

“Being a teenager is different to being 23, and being 23 is very different to say being 28. Today, I know my body better than ever,” Federer said. “Some things take a little bit longer to recover from with age but I can prevent more problems by doing a lot more stretching, physical work, practice, massages. I’m doing everything much more professionally today than I ever have before.

“But then of course there’s no denying that I’ve played almost a thousand matches in my life and that obviously has a big wear and tear on your body, too, so you have to be a little bit more careful.”

Federer is playing at the Rogers Cup in Toronto this week, his first tournament since beginning a trial spell with Sampras’ former coach Paul Annacone.

He will target his 17th Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open, which begins on Aug. 30.

LONDON (AP)—No American man is in the Top 10 for the first time since the men’s tennis computer rankings began in 1973.

Andy Roddick dropped from No. 9 to No. 11 in the ATP tour rankings issued Monday.

Roddick lost in the third round last week at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic in Washington.

U.S. men have gone 27 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments without a title. Roddick was the last American to win a major title at the 2003 U.S. Open.

Still ranked No. 1 is French Open and Wimbledon champion Rafael Nadal. The Spaniard has a lead of nearly 4,000 points over Novak Djokovic.

Roger Federer remains at No. 3, followed by Andy Murray and Robin Soderling.

LONDON (AP)—Fourth-ranked Andy Murray is splitting with coach Miles Maclagan after less than three years.

A statement on the British player’s website on Tuesday said that “following a review of his coaching needs, Andy has parted company” with Maclagan.

The statement says “the situation” will be reviewed after the U.S. Open from Aug. 30-Sept. 12.

Still searching for his first Grand Slam title, the 23-year-old Murray has been coached by Maclagan since he replaced Brad Gilbert in 2007.

Murray thanked Maclagan for “his positive contribution to my career. We have had a lot of success and fun working together.”

Murray is in Los Angeles competing in the Farmers Classic—his first tournament since losing in the semifinals at Wimbledon.