Sports and gambling is always a hot topic.

Tim Donaghy. Rick Tocchet. Pete Rose. Arizona State. Boston College. The Black Sox.

Now comes tennis. Tennis?

Yeah, well tennis may not be all that big in Las Vegas and just try to get a bet down with a street bookie. But with European-based online betting sites, tennis gets a fair-to-middlin' amount of traffic. And like boxing, you only have to get to one guy for a sure thing.

Top 20 tennis pro Andy Murray, of Scotland, is saying out loud that matches are being rigged and tennis organizers are taking the accusation seriously. This comes on the heels of something we wrote about a few months ago, that an online betting operation had voided bets on a match played in Poland between Nikolay Davydenko and a much lower-ranked opponent because of some odd betting.

In the old days, this sort of thing would have been impossible because you wouldn't be able to get any serious money down on an obscure tennis match. But Internet betting sites make it feasible -- and, in fact, are the vulnerable parties. Hence, they become the watchdogs on sports corruption, just as Vegas bookmakers have been in cases such as the ASU point-shaving scandal in 1994.

Over and over again, the lesson is driven home that a reputable, government-regulated, tax-paying, vested self-interest sports gambling industry -- along with strong policies among sports organizations to educate and police players and officials -- is about the only way to keep instances of game-fixing to a minimum.