By Charles Bricker

When the ATP World Tour Championships begin Sunday (7:30 a.m., ET), there will be no American among the elite final eight singles contestants for the first time since 1986 -- the only previous year when a U.S. player didn't reach this end-of-the-season tournament.

What that is going to be mean for television ratings is hard to say. Tennis is a global game, but for U.S. viewers there will be no home boy to root for. No James Blake, who hasn't had a good season and who has work to do next year just to get back into the top 20. And no Andy Roddick, whose injury has not cured.

It's the same, well-known format -- two groups of four players each with the top two coming out and into the semifinals after playing the other three players in their group.

No. 1 Roger Federer in one group, No. 2 Rafael Nadal in the other. But neither is the favorite in this event, which most expect will be won by the hottest player on tour, defending champion Novak Djokovic.

Andy Murray vs. U.S. Open champion Juan Martin Del Potro opens the tournament Sunday with Federer vs. Fernando Verdasco in the Sunday evening match. On Monday, Nadal plays Robin Soderling in the early match with Djoko and Nikolay Davydenko completing the first leg of the tournament in the evening. Soderling got in when Roddick withdrew.

It's the end of an exhausting year for these men and it's an embarrassment for the ATP that when this season is over these eight players, who are the guts of the tour, will have virtually no time off. Maybe two weeks.

By mid-December they'll have to begin training again to prepare for the 2010 season. It's an outrage and the length of this schedule is slowly killing the game, saddling the players with serious injury by the time the U.S. Open is over in September.

Roddick has already spoken out strongly about the problem and he's been joined by numerous top players. Unfortunately, there's little optimism than anything will be done about it. A few days ago, tour CEO David Helfant was asked about the length of the season and said it was a complex problem.

A complex problem? Yes, we all know that. There's money invested in tournaments late in the season. There's also injuries that are seriously affecting players' performances. It's significant that the women finished a month ago. When 2010 begins, the WTA players will be refreshed and ready to play. The men, meanwhile, will be plotting how they can get out of playing some of the important late-season tournaments next year.

What we want from Helfant is more than just "it's a complex problem." We want to know that he agrees with the players on the length of schedule and that he's going to do something about it.

It wouldn't be surprising if one or two of the final eight pulls up lame during this next, final week of the season.

Among the things at stake:

* The prestige of winning the tournament.

* The points -- 1,500 -- which will leave either Federer or Nadal at No. 1.

* For Djokovic, a strong signal that the addition of Todd Martin to his coaching team is the final piece in his rise to No. 1. A win here, coupled with his wins over Federer and Nadal in recent weeks, will mark him as the man to watch in 2010.

* For Nadal, he needs to show that he's back to the form that carried him to No. 1 in 2008. His season has been tortured by knee and abdominal injuries.

* For Murray, he's playing before a home crowd in London with a wrist injury that is now rehabilitated. He's certainly one of the four or five players who can win this.

Charles Bricker can be reached at bricker@tennisnews.com