High-profile pullouts a blow but good start for Shanghai Masters - Sun

The high-profile withdrawals and the mass retirements may have been disappointing but the inaugural Shanghai Masters was still a great success, according to tournament director Leon Sun.

Roger Federer and Andy Murray both pulled out before the new $3.24 million event began, while US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro was among nine players who retired injured during the week.

Shanghai, however, is used to that.

In 2005, organisers protested that they "thought they had purchased a Mercedes only to find it was a jalopy" when five of the top eight players in the world pulled out of the first season-ending Masters Cup to be played at the Qizhong arena.

"Injuries are part of the sport, as a tournament director I have to get used to that," Sun told Reuters in an interview.

"From a fan's point of view, we were obviously a little bit disappointed, but we're trying to educate the fans that you are not just following the stars but the whole tournament.

"We had a worst situation in 2005 but we still had good crowds and a good tournament."

The season finale has now moved to London but in its place Shanghai was awarded the only one of the nine Masters series events to take place outside of Europe and North America. That paved the way for a new 5,000 seat grandstand court and a third court with 2,000 seats to supplement the 15,000 capacity main arena although the extra seats did not amount to extra spectators.

"If you look at the ticket numbers, it's pretty similar to last year," said Sun.

"It looks like we have lower attendance than last year. But this year we have more stadiums and people are more spread out."

Sun said officials had also managed to attract more Chinese partners this year and around 95 per cent of sponsorship revenues would go directly to the organisers.

"We have definitely hit our target on the sponsorship side and on the ticket side, we're very close," he said.

"We're pretty much there. If the players, the officials and the sponsors say you're good, and your audience are positive, that's very encouraging."