Many still grumble and call the decision to award women equal prize money at the four grand-slam tournaments ludicrous. They wonder at the wisdom of high profile companies who have signed huge sponsorship deals to back the ladies game and point out the men play twice as hard for much longer periods.

What they cannot argue against however is that a meeting of two of the most photogenic players ever to brandish a tennis racket in a major final is guaranteed to attract worldwide media coverage. Every photographer’s dream when they arrived at the Australian Open was a showdown between Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic in the women’s final. Top flight female tennis is intrinsically linked with glamour and you just don’t get any more glamorous than this pair of beauties.

However the whole things could be ambushed and the photographers telephoto lenses pointed in a different direction when the match comes to a conclusion. The Sony Ericsson WTA Tour must ensure that the moment is not ruined by another ill-judged moment of stupidity on behalf of Yuri Sharapov, Maria's father who doesn’t exactly do the game credit.

He is notorious in tennis circles and few bother to even try and engage him in conversation because they know what the answer will be. He is crudely anti-social to both rivals and the media at large. He does not want to be quoted and doesn’t even seem to comprehend that the world is hugely interested in a man who left his wife behind in Siberia and moved to the United States with his seven year-old daughter, convinced she was destined for stardom.

In that respect he was right, but take a straw poll amongst Maria Sharapova’s peers and rivals and he will top the unpopularity stakes. They don’t like his attitude and Anastasia Myskina, a fellow Russian and the French Open winner in 2004, threatened never to play the Fed Cup if Sharapova was picked and her father was encouraged to join the team support group.

Larissa Neiland, who filled the role of Russia’s Fed Cup coach for several years, referred to Sharapov as a ‘nasty father’ who was his daughter’s greatest problem. “I just don’t see how he would co-exist with other girls, parents and team officials,” she said.

Indeed he is habitually so at odds with his compatriots because his behaviour is repeatedly outrageous, nasty and occasionally out of control. But things have reached an all-time low here at the Australian Open as his daughter has struck what seems to be the richest vein of form in her career.

His throat-slitting gesture, captured for posterity by Australian television and played repeatedly at the dismay of the WTA, after her stunning win over Justine Henin, the top seed, depicted the man in the most horrendous light. Earlier in the tournament Maria said his hooded jacket made him look like an assassin. Now he seemed to act like one.

Repeatedly in the past Sharapov has been guilty of coaching his daughter by a selection of pre-designated signs. Last year he was fined a laughably small amount for such a transgression and he seemed to treat the disciplinary measure with contempt.

Then when his daughter’s defence of the US Open title came to a premature end at the hands of an 18-year-old Polish upstart last autumn, he made his displeasure plain for the world to see. When the time came for Maria to explain her loss her eyes were bloodshot and her distress clear for all to see.

Tennis officials have acted before to ensure bullish tennis fathers do not ruin their daughter’s lives and famously both Jim Pierce (father of Mary) and Jelena Dokic’s domineering daddy, Damir, were banned by the WTA Tour. If Yuri Sharapov ruins a day that will be special for his daughter and memorable for the tennis world at large, he should be made to forever rue the consequences.