Brisbane International to combine men’s and women’s finals on Super Sunday

THE Brisbane International will not have a stand-alone women’s singles final this summer, hooking it up with the men’s singles final for a Sunday super session of play.

The 2019 tournament, set to be the last Brisbane International to have combined men’s and women’s fields, will be played over seven days, one fewer than for recent tournaments at the Queensland Tennis Centre.

The schedule also budgets for all second round matches to be completed by the Wednesday night. Two of the four top men’s seeds might not play before Thursday under the previous format.

The schedule changes are to ensure there are more men’s and women’s matches together over more sessions in the December 31-January 6 tournament than in the previous eight-day format.

“The move from 14 sessions in previous years allows us to increase the quality of matches played in 13 world-class sessions,’’ tournament director Cameron Pearson said.

“There will be a greatly enhanced quality of men’s and women’s content in every session.

“We also like that we will have a big finish with the women’s and men’s finals on the same day.’’

A Kids’ Day activities will still be staged on Sunday, December 30, but organisers will schedule no singles main draw matches that day, unlike recent years.

The Saturday night session, which comprised the women’s singles final and a doubles final last summer, will have a singles menu of a women’s semi-final and a men’s semi-final.

The Saturday day session will change from two men’s singles semi-finals to a singles semi for each sex.

The finals session will start at 3pm on January 6 with the men’s doubles final, followed by the women’s title decider and lastly the men’s singles final.

Tennis Australia has had ongoing discussions with Tourism and Events Queensland and other government bodies about the January 2020 World Team Cup for men.

Other state governments are interested in staging WTC ties.

TA CEO Craig Tiley said last month that Brisbane will be among as few as “two or three’’ cities to host ties in the ATP’s World Team Cup, which would see the Brisbane International become a women’s-only tournament in the first week of the January dates.

WTC men’s matches would be scheduled at the QTC to augment the programming for the WTA matches there.

Tiley said the QTC was “in the mix’’ to stage a WTC semi-final or final in 2020.

The NSW Government this month said it wants the WTC in Sydney. It would have to agree to erect a roof or sail over Ken Rosewall Arena and improve other facilities to secure the final.

Pearson said he expected the reduction to 13 sessions of play would not drastically impact upon the total attendance, which has been more than 90,000 for six of the past seven years.