2008 Proximus Diamond Games

TennisEventInfo|2008|Proximus Diamond Games
date=February 11 – February 17
edition=7th
champs=flagicon|BEL Justine Henin
champd=flagicon|ZIM Cara Black / flagicon|USA Liezel Huber

The 2008 Proximus Diamond Games was the 2008 Tier II tournament in the WTA Tour of the annually-held Proximus Diamond Games tennis tournament. It was played from February 11 to February 17, 2008

Gambling threat

On February 11, the first day of the event, tournament spokeswoman Katia Stroobants announced that three men had been ejected from the stadium after being caught gambling. The men, two Russians and one German, were logged on to a gambling website and were exploiting the delay between when the point was won, and when it appeared on the official website. Stroobants said that the men were asked to leave or hand over their laptops, and took the decision to leave. [cite news | url = http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/12022008/58/wta-tour-gambling-trio-ejected-stands.html | title = Gambling trio ejected from stands | publisher = Yahoo!, Eurosport | date = 2008-02-12]

This incident followed a spate of gambling scandals to hit the sport, with several male players admitting that they had been approached to fix matches; irregular betting patterns had also been observed in certain matches, in the months leading up to the event. In January 2007, WTA Tour chief Larry Scott had announced that the organization was anticipating problems and was trying to put in place measures to deal with them. [cite news | url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/7179695.stm | title = Tennis boss warns of mafia threat | publisher = BBC SPORT | date = 2008-01-11]

Champions

ingles

flagicon|BEL Justine Henin def. flagicon|ITA Karin Knapp, 6–3, 6–3
*It was Henin's 2nd title of the year, the 41st and last of her career.

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Doubles

flagicon|ZIM Cara Black / flagicon|USA Liezel Huber def. flagicon|CZE Květa Peschke / flagicon|JPN Ai Sugiyama 6–1, 6–3

References

External links

* [http://www.sport.be/proximusdiamondgames/2008/eng/ Official website]