Tennis news - Nick Kyrgios says ATP and WTA ‘shouldn’t merge’ after Roger Federer's suggestion

On Wednesday, Federer said "it is time for men's and women's tennis to be united" - a notion Kyrgios initially appeared to agree with, although his simple "yes" reply could now be interpreted as stating the Swiss is in fact the only person thinking about a merger.

Kyrgios then said he is opposed to merging the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), although he did not elaborate in his tweet on Thursday morning.

"We can come out of this with two weakened bodies or one stronger body," said Federer on Wednesday, who also said that it "probably should have happened a long time ago".

Federer added: "I am not talking about merging competition on the court but merging the two governing bodies that oversee the men's and women's professional tours.

"It's too confusing for the fans when there are different ranking systems, different logos, different websites, different tournament categories."

Rafa Nadal, Simona Halep and Garbine Muguruza were among the players agreeing with what Federer had to say.

Nadal replied to his great rival: "As you know per our discussions I completely agree that it would be great to get out of this world crisis with the union of men's and women's tennis in one organisation."

Meanwhile, Tennis Australia chief Craig Tiley said a merger would be lucrative for tennis, which also includes the ITF and national federations looking after each Grand SLam.

"So is there a way where you bring those seven governing bodies together and you find a solution for a better a future, a future that puts more revenue into the system because the value's higher when combining the men and the women," Tiley told AAP on Thursday.

"There's an opportunity to leverage off the asset of each other and success of each other. The objective of global sport should be ensuring that the lower-ranked players get paid more money, that there's more players making a living out of the game.

"So there has to be some sort of redistribution of the wealth or more revenue in the system - and more revenue in the system comes from aggregation and joining together."

Both the French Open and Wimbledon have been cancelled, with no competitive tennis scheduled until 13 July, although that is subject to change with ongoing developments.