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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.

The ATP sent organizers of the Madrid Masters tournament, which starts in two days, a list of the names and credit-card numbers of 15 bettors who they want excluded from entry, tournament director Gerard Tsobanian said today in an interview.

``It's a very international list,'' Tsobanian said. Some of the gamblers have tried to get into past tournaments by posing as journalists, he added.

It's the latest step by the ATP to clampdown on possible betting scams. It has instructed tournaments to prevent spectators from using laptops and restricted access to the players' lounge and locker room.

ATP spokesman Kris Dent, in an email, declined to comment ``on the specifics of many measures we have in place to deal with integrity measures.''

A bettor could take advantage of the 20-second delay by placing a bet if, for example, a player got injured or there was a sudden swing in a match, Mark Davies, a spokesman for Betfair, the U.K.'s biggest bookmaker, said in an interview. He added that he'd heard rumors this was happening.

``I haven't seen it in practice,'' Davies said.

The Madrid event will also have ``between five and 10'' plain-clothes security guards in the crowd during matches with Spain's top-ranked Rafael Nadal to check no bets are being placed, Tsobanian said. Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, the No. 2 and No. 3-ranked players, are also expected to compete at the event, although Federer won't make a final decision until tomorrow, he said.

Betfair nullified all $7 million of wagers on Nikolay Davydenko's second-round match at the Poland Open on Aug. 2 last year because of suspicious betting patterns. On Sept. 12, the ATP cleared Davydenko of wrongdoing.

(Source: Bloomberg)