As another regular tennis season draws to a close with the women's season-ending Championships taking place in Doha and the elite men preparing to visit London, 2009 will be remembered a season for timely saviours.

A men's game shorn for at least half the year of a top-level Rafael Nadal might have turned into a one-man Roger Federer show but for the sterling efforts of Andy Roddick, Andy Murray and Juan Martin Del Potro.

And just when the women's game was lurching towards tedium with a stack of unfamiliar faces failing to push the Williams sisters from their peak, out of retirement stepped the extraordinary Kim Clijsters.

So here are Press Association Sport's gongs for a memorable 12 months.

MEN'S PLAYER OF THE YEAR: JUAN MARTIN DEL POTRO

Federer gained grand slam greatness and, with Nadal stricken by injury, Murray pushed him all the way. But while Murray is forced to wait for his major maiden victory, Del Potro stepped up to the plate with his stunning and richly deserved US Open triumph, wresting the initiative in the increasingly competitive battle to usurp Federer as world number one.

WOMEN'S PLAYER OF THE YEAR: KIM CLIJSTERS

Clijsters' sensational US Open triumph surprised even herself, and the manner of that success suggests not only that her break has not blunted her qualities, but in fact has positively embellished them. Clijsters' win could not have come at a better time for a women's game struggling for competent household names. It has a lot to thank her for, and it will be thanking her a long time yet.

MEN'S PROSPECT OF THE YEAR: MARIN CILIC

Okay, so the 21-year-old Croatian is hardly an unknown quantity, but 2009 was the year in which Cilic belatedly began to prove he can mix it with the big guns. Huge wins over Nadal and Murray, and a run to the US Open quarter-finals where he took a set off eventual winner Del Potro, are a portent for a real push into the top 10 by Cilic in the 2010 campaign.

WOMEN'S PROSPECT OF THE YEAR: VICTORIA AZARENKA

Arguably there are others, like Caroline Wozniacki and Dominika Cibulkova, who caused more of a stir in 2009. But as far as major-winning potential goes, the 20-year-old Russian looks to be a star in the making. 2009 brought a Sony Ericsson Open title and two grand slam quarter-final berths. Next year, the feisty, hard-hitting starlet will be eyeing nothing less than major glory.

MEN'S DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE YEAR: ANDY RODDICK

Roddick has always looked like a player worthy of more than one major title. He has consistently fallen short at the very top level, but his agonising Wimbledon final defeat to Roger Federer suggested he had finally worked out how to live with the very best. Alas, Roddick's hoped-for assault on his home US Open petered out in a third round loss to John Isner: he has not won a match since.

WOMEN'S DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE YEAR: DINARA SAFINA

For all of Safina's undoubted clay court prowess, the Russian squandered repeated chances to prove that she, and not the vocal Serena Williams, was worthy of her long-held world number one ranking. Pitiful losses such as her Wimbledon semi-final meltdown against Venus, and her French Open defeat to Svetlana Kuznetsova, simply lent succour to Williams' argument.