• What The Deuce

Joint tennis finals can kill two birds with one stone

The women bring a bit of glamour to the sport but lack big-name stars to rival the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal © Getty Images

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While Caroline Wozniacki, Maria Sharapova and Co. are gearing up for the season finale in Istanbul, their male counterparts are faced with another month on the ATP Tour.

With the US Open out of the way, the likes of Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal are able to take it easy for a couple of weeks, having already secured their spot at the ATP World Tour Finals in London.

But for the likes of Janko Tipsarevic, Mardy Fish and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, desperately chasing every last ranking point in a bid to qualify for the year-end finals, there is still a long way to go.

With three places still up for grabs, much of the attention is on the likely candidates to fill those spots and the complicated connotations and mathematics involved in the last sprint to the line.

Tipsarevic, Gilles Simon and Alexandr Dolgopolov are at the St Petersburg Open, while Tsonga and Juan Martin del Potro are playing in Vienna this week, while in a parallel universe over in Istanbul, the glitz and glamour of the WTA Championships has arrived in Turkey. But many casual tennis fans will be unaware the finale of the WTA calendar is even taking place this week.

For all the sparkly dresses and glamour that female players bring to the sport, there is little doubt that men's tennis is streets ahead in terms of exposure, popularity and star-quality. Men's tennis is currrently enjoying a golden era, and with Djokovic stealing the show this season from the ever-popular Nadal and 16-time grand slam champion Roger Federer, the sport is not short of big names.

The Williams sisters and Kim Clijsters, the stars that have lit up women's tennis for the past decade are fading, leaving a void that Wozniacki, Petra Kvitova and co are yet to fill. The WTA is fiercely proud of its separate identity, but the absence of a female Federer has left the sport trailing in the men's wake.

Is a joint season finale on the horizon? © Getty Images

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Nadal and Andy Murray have voiced their discontent at the hectic tennis calendar, and the men will feel particularly hard done-by when they arrive in Valencia and Basel next week, knowing that their female counterparts are sunning themselves on a beach somewhere.

The men want a shorter season; the WTA needs a publicity boost. While it may seem like an overly simple solution to a hugely complex issue, why not make the year-end championships mixed?

The ATP and WTA work in harmony in Brisbane, in Beijing, Miami and Moscow to mention but a few successful tournaments, why not for the season finale? With the world's top eight men's and women's players in action, it would also have the atmosphere of the second week of a slam and would have no problem drawing the big crowds.

It would not be easy. Cutting the men's season by another couple of weeks would mean a number of the ATP 250 tournaments facing the chop. But with the top names clamouring for major overhaul of the tennis calendar - could this be the proverbial stone to kill two birds?

Asia, with its growing tennis audience, is beginning to hanker for a major, and while a fifth slam is a million miles away, a joint ATP-WTA finals in the Far East could be the perfect solution.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.