The Shanghai ATP Masters 1000 was established to fulfill the desire of the ATP World Tour and the
Chinese Tennis Association to develop the market for
tennis in China and Asia in general. In 2010 following a sponsorship deal the tournament was renamed the Shanghai Rolex Masters. In 1996, a professional tournament was held for the first time in Shanghai, the
largest city in China. The inaugural
Shanghai Open was won by Russian
Andrei Olhovskiy over
Mark Knowles of
the Bahamas. In 2002 the year-end championships, then called the
Tennis Masters Cup. were held in the city. 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. 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. 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. Shanghai was eventually given the October spot in the calendar, previously held by the Mutua Madrileña Masters Madrid indoor hard courts event, but was to be held as an outdoor hard surface tournament, thereby reducing the number of indoor Masters events to one, that being the Paris Masters. The new
Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open moved to outdoor
red clay courts during the spring European clay court season. The Tennis Masters Cup became the
ATP World Tour Finals and moved to
the O2 arena in London, United Kingdom. The promotional campaign for the tournament started in early 2009, with the presentation of its slogan, "Simply The Best", and the event was officially launched on May 5, 2009. Expecting nearly 150,000 spectators during the tournament, the Shanghai Rolex Masters was introduced as the flagship of an Asian swing in the
2009 ATP World Tour calendar after the late September
ATP World Tour 250 Thailand Open of
Bangkok and
Malaysian Open of
Kuala Lumpur, and then early October
ATP World Tour 500 Japan Open Tennis Championships of Tokyo and
China Open of Beijing. ==Past finals==