Shanghai ATP Masters 1000

Shanghai Rolex Masters
Shanghai ATP Masters 1000 logo.png
 ATP World Tour
Event name Shanghai
Location Shanghai, P.R. China
Venue Qizhong Forest
Sports City Arena
Category ATP World Tour
Masters 1000
Surface Hard
Draw 56S/28S/24D
Prize money $3,240,000
Website www.shanghai
masters1000.com
The Qizhong Arena at the time of the 2008 Tennis Masters Cup

The Shanghai Rolex Masters (formally the Shanghai ATP Masters 1000 presented by Rolex) is a professional tennis tournament played on outdoor hard courts. It is currently part of the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) World Tour. It will be held annually in October at the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena in Shanghai, People's Republic of China.[1] The inaugural edition took place from October 11 to October 18, 2009.[1]

Contents

Organisation

Competition format

Matches in the singles and doubles main draws are played over eight days, from one Sunday to the next (in 2009, competition will be held from October 11 to October 18). Qualifying matches for the singles main draw will be played in the week-end preceding the first complete week of competition (in 2009, on Saturday, October 10 and Sunday, October 11).[1][2]

The singles main draw features 56 different players (six rounds of play to the title for all competitors but the 8 seeds), including 44 or 45 direct acceptances, 7 qualifiers, 4 wild cards, and 1 eventual special exempt. The singles qualifying draw features 28 different players (two rounds of play to qualification for all competitors including the 14 seeds), with 24 direct acceptances, and 4 wild cards. The doubles draw, finally, features 24 different teams (five rounds of play to the title for all competitors but the 8 seeded teams), including 22 direct acceptances (16 in advance, 6 on-site), and 2 wild cards.[2]

The entry deadline for direct acceptance comes twenty-one days prior to the first Monday of the tournament week for the singles main and qualiyfing draws, and fourteen days prior to the first Monday of the tournament week, with six spots reserved for on-site entries, for the doubles draw. Players and teams on the acceptance list are sorted according to their position in the computerized ATP Rankings in the week preceding competition, to enter the main draws, the qualifying draw (in singles) or to be kept as alternates (in doubles).[2]

The singles and doubles draws will be set first by selecting the eight seeds in both the singles and doubles competition, according the most recent ATP rankings in the week preceding competition. After the seeds and byes are placed, the remaining players, including wild cards, qualifiers and special exempts (in singles) are placed in the rest of the draw, from top to bottom.[2]

All singles matches will be played in best-of-three tie-break sets format, while the doubles matches will be played in two tie-break sets and a match tie-break, and use the no ad scoring system.[2]

Points and prize money

As an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event, the tournament will distribute up to 1000 ATP Rankings points to the singles and doubles champions.[1] For the inaugural edition, a total of US$5,250,000 will be shared between the singles and doubles competitors. This is a table detailing the points and prize money allocation for each round of the 2009 Shanghai ATP Masters 1000[1]:

Event W F SF QF 3R 2R 1R Q Q2 Q1
Singles Points 1000 600 360 180 90 45 10 25 14 0
Prize money $616,500 $302,000 $151,800 $77,750 $40,330 $21,000 $11,000 - $2,650 $1,350
Doubles Points 1000 600 360 180 0 - - - - -
Prize money $252,550 $105,100 $44,750 $19,450 $8,800 $4,000 - - - -

Venue

The Qizhong Arena main court, during the 2008 Tennis Masters Cup

All matches are played in outdoor conditions for the first time at the Qizhong Arena, after the venue held the Tennis Masters Cup indoors four times from 2005 to 2008. The surface is a hard court one, specifically DecoTurf.[1][3]

The venue was originally built in 2004 and 2005 to host the Tennis Masters Cup, after the ATP awarded the tournament to Shanghai for a three-years contract (2005-2007), later extended to a fourth year.[4][5] The site was conceived to become the biggest tennis venue in Asia, with a 15,000-seats main stadium, featuring a magnolia-shaped retractable roof, and twenty additional indoor and outdoor courts (the facility was eventually surpassed by the Olympic Green Tennis Center, created for the 2008 Summer Olympics, as the largest Asian tennis complex).

In preparation of the first edition of the Shanghai ATP Masters 1000, it was decided that the venue would be expanded, with several new stadiums and courts to be constructed by August 2009, including a Grand Stand Court 2, with a seating capacity of 5,000 spectactors, and a Grand Stand Court 3, with a seating capacity of 3,000 spectators.[6]

History

Novak Djokovic won the 2008 Tennis Masters Cup at the Qizhong Arena in Shanghai

The creation of the Shanghai ATP Masters 1000 presented by Rolex in 2009 results from the Association of Tennis Professionals' and the Chinese Tennis Association's desire to develop the market of tennis in China, and more generally for the ATP, on the whole Asian continent.[7] In 2010 following a sponsorship deal the tournament was renamed the Shanghai Rolex Masters.[8]

The first ever tennis tournament to be held in Asia took place in British-controlled Hong Kong in 1973, 24 years before the handover to China. The Hong Kong Open (discontinued in 2002 to be replaced by the Thailand Open) was the first of dozens of Grand Prix and ATP tournaments that would be created in the region over the next 30 years. In 1996, a tennis tournament was finally created for the first time in Shanghai, the largest city of the country. The Shanghai Open, won in its first edition by Russian Andrei Olhovskiy over Mark Knowles of the Bahamas[9] was held during six years before the ATP decided to award to Shanghai the right to host the 2002 edition of the year-end championships, then called the Tennis Masters Cup.[10][11] The success of the 2002 Tennis Masters Cup, won by World No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt from Australia, prompted the ATP, which had abandoned the idea of a touring Tennis Masters Cup, to award Shanghai the right to hold the tournament from 2005 to 2007.

While the ATP International Series tournament of Shanghai was held two more years in 2003 and 2004 at the Shanghai New International Expo Center created for the 2002 Tennis Masters Cup, a new facility, the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena, was built to host the year-end championships starting from 2005.[12] The ATP eventually extended the three-year deal to a fourth year in 2006, allowing the Tennis Masters Cup to increase its success in Shanghai.[4][5] Over the four years spent at the Qizhong venue, the tournament saw Swiss World No. 1 Roger Federer reach three finals, losing the first in 2005 to Argentine David Nalbandian before winning the following two in 2006 and 2007, and Novak Djokovic of Serbia take the latest edition in 2008.

In March 2007, the ATP announced that their 2009 rebranding[13] would also be the occasion to use the Qizhong facility and the Shanghai Tennis Masters Cup organisation to host an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event in the city, the equivalent of what were then the ATP Masters Series.[14] Shanghai was eventually given the October spot in the calendar, previously held by the Mutua Madrileña Masters Madrid indoor hard courts event, which became the Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open, and moved to outdoor red clay courts during the spring European clay court season, while the Tennis Masters Cup became the ATP World Tour Finals and moved to the O2 arena in London, United Kingdom.[13]

Organized by the Juss International Sports Event Management Company directed by Jiang Lan, the event was formally presented in a press conference on November 13, 2008, during the season's Tennis Masters Cup tournament, where the choice of the draw sizes, of the surface, and the building of additional courts were announced. Rolex, the Swiss watch company, was also revealed as the official sponsor of the event.[15] The promotional campaign for the tournament started in early 2009, with the presentation of its slogan, "Simply The Best",[16] and the event was officially launched on May 5, 2009.[6] Expecting nearly 150,000 spectators during the tournament, the Shanghai ATP Masters 1000 was introduced as the flagship of an Asian swing in the 2009 ATP World Tour calendar after the late September ATP World Tour 250 PTT Thailand Open of Bangkok and Malaysian Open of Kuala Lumpur, and the early October ATP World Tour 500 Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships of Tokyo and China Open of Beijing.[6]

Past finals

Singles

Year Champion Runner-up Score
2009 Russia Nikolay Davydenko Spain Rafael Nadal 7–6(3), 6–3

Doubles

Year Champions Runners-up Score
2009 France Julien Benneteau
France Jo-Wilfried Tsonga		 Poland Mariusz Fyrstenberg
Poland Marcin Matkowski		 6–2, 6–4

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "atpworldtour.com tournament profile". atpworldtour.com. http://www.atpworldtour.com/Tennis/Tournaments/Shanghai.aspx. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "2009 ATP World Tour Rulebook". atpworldtour.com. http://www.atpworldtour.com/Corporate/Rulebook.aspx. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  3. ↑ "DecoTurf Tennis Surface Selected for Shanghai ATP Masters 1000". decoturf.com. 2009-10-11. http://www.decoturf.com/news.html. Retrieved 2009-10-18. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "ATP Masters Cup to be kept in Shanghai". people.com.cn. 2006-03-14. http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=6&click_id=30&art_id=qw1142343721653S163. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Shanghai Masters Cup extends commitment to 2008". chinaview.cn. 2006-03-15. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-03/15/content_4305155.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Shanghai ATP Masters 1000 Officially Launched". atpworldtour.com. 2009-05-05. http://www.atpworldtour.com/News/Tennis/2009/05/Shanghai-ATP-Masters-1000-Launched.aspx. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  7. ↑ "Tennis thriving without local stars". People's Daily. 2008-11-19. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90779/90868/6305090.html. Retrieved 2008-12-02. 
  8. ↑ http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2010/201005/20100528/article_438378.htm
  9. ↑ "Ascendant Majoli overcomes challenge of Sanchez Vicario". The Independent. 1996-02-05. http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/ascendant-majoli-overcomes-challenge-of-sanchez-vicario-1317380.html. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  10. ↑ "Shanghai to Host 2002 Tennis Masters Cup". People's Daily. 2001-07-07. http://english.people.com.cn/200107/07/eng20010707_74395.html. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  11. ↑ "Shanghai to make Masters Cup a success, says ATP officer". Xinhua News Agency (XNA). 2002-11-11. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2002-11/11/content_626041.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  12. ↑ "Federer unveils new stadium". people.com.cn. 2005-10-04. http://english.people.com.cn/200510/04/eng20051004_212465.html. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Kamakshi Tandon (2008-11-06). "Posing 10 ATP questions for 2009". ESPN. http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/columns/story?columnist=kamakshi_tandon&id=3686016. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  14. ↑ Martyn Herman (2007-03-28). "Shanghai to get Masters Series tournament in 2009". ESPN. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=tennis&id=2815475. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 
  15. ↑ Sandra Harwitt (2008-11-18). "Esoteric round-robin format has its share of flaws". ESPN. http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/notebook?page=notebook/tennis11182008. Retrieved 2008-12-02. 
  16. ↑ ""Simply The Best" Campaign Slogan For Shanghai". atpworldtour.com. 2009-04-15. http://www.atpworldtour.com/News/Tennis/2009/04/shanghaistadium.aspx. Retrieved 2009-06-13. 

External links

Shanghai Rolex Masters 1000
2009
2010