Japan Tennis Association executive members said that the lifetime ban on Junn Mitsuhashi completely came out of the blue.
"We had not had any previous contact (with the Tennis Integrity Unit)," JTA managing director Tsuyoshi Fukui said at a news conference at Tokyo's Kishi Memorial Hall on Wednesday evening.
JTA press officer Nobutaka Hatta said that he received an email from the TIU at 3:50 p.m. on Tuesday to notify the nation's tennis governing body that the 27-year-old player had been banned and fined $50,000 for match-fixing.