Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have indulged in some Andy Murray-style bicep-flexing in the past few months, helping to precipitate a political storm that engulfed the head of men's tennis. The present leader of the women's game is positioning himself to be the unifying force that can bring the two sides together beneath a single banner, but first he is going to have to clean an eight-year running sore that has blighted his sport.

Larry Scott, the chief executive of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, announced yesterday what he described as the “most sweeping reforms in tennis history”, offering a streamlined calendar that ends in the first week of November, a record ten events at which equal prize-money will be paid and the decision to allow on-court coaching at every event on the tour from next year apart from the four grand-slam tournaments.

Where Scott's able and well-remunerated handling of the tour over five years has fallen down has been his inability to broker a truce between the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, and the largest event in their native California, the Indian Wells championship. The sisters were due to play in the 2001 semi-final there but Venus withdrew with a knee injury ten minutes before the scheduled start. That announcement was jeered, as were Serena and her father, Richard, throughout the final two days later.

The Williams family said that they would never return; nor have they. Scott has attempted to act as a go-between, but both sides have been unwilling to bend and so the chances are that, in 2010, the sisters - who were due to compete against each other for the seventeenth time in last night's US Open quarter-finals - will be suspended from the Miami tournament that they have won eight times between them. If that is what Scott has to do to enforce his rules, he cannot shirk from it.

“I've had several hours of conversation both with Venus, who is on our player council, and Serena and their family and managers about it, and they've told me at this point in time they're still planning on not playing [in Indian Wells],” Scott said.

“I'd like to see them play but I'm also respectful of their individual decisions and their sense of what happened. But I think they respect that we need to have rules that apply evenly to all players and this rule will be applied to them around Indian Wells the same way it would be to any top-ten player around any of these tournaments.

“And while the players are getting a lot that they like about this new system in terms of increased prize- money, a shorter season and reduced commitments, there are a lot of sacrifices to be made in terms of much stiffer penalties, greater accountability and a greater commitment to the biggest tournaments in the sport.”

A novel element outlined by Scott is that a group of outside auditors will be allowed to examine the books of every tournament in the calendar, to give those who govern the sport a greater understanding of the operation of those tournaments that they sanction without actually appreciating how they make ends meet. More fascinating still is that if the individual tournament revenues increase, the prize-money they offer will rise by the same percentage.

Equally, if revenues decline, prize-money will fall, although not below an agreed minimum.

Scott is clearly the most able of administrators in the game today. It is a pity that he is not allowed a place on the scheduling committee of the US Open, which decided yesterday to put a women's doubles as the first match of the day on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court, which delayed the rest of the play by 2 hours, upsetting Andy Murray's preparation for his quarter-final against Juan Martín Del Potro, of Argentina.

Dinara Safina at least made up for squandered time when she defeated Flavia Pennetta, of Italy, 6-2, 6-3 to become the first player to reach the women's semi-finals. As she has reached the finals in six of her past seven events, including her first grand-slam title decider at Roland Garros, whichever Williams went through to meet her last night would need to be on her mettle.