The Shanghai Experts 1000 occasion is the last week of the Asian hard court swing, and our tennis columnist, Dan Weston, returns to determine whether Roger Federer can add to his list of titles this year... The Asian hard court swing is concluded by shanghai Masters On the opening day, the Shanghai Pros 1000 tournament games in the early hours of this morning, ahead of a packed timetable early on Monday morning. Those bettors and dealers that dislike the early starts will be delighted to know that the tour returns to Europe and Europeans will look forward to some hours that are more familiar to see their tennis. Quick conditions anticipated in Shanghai The very first consideration when analyzing matters in Shanghai is without doubt the conditions. We've seen high seed Rafa Nadal perform nicely in Beijing in the previous week - that he takes on Nick Kyrgios in today's final shortly - but conditions in Beijing are extremely slow compared to those in Shanghai, as well as slower conditions surely being favourable to Rafa, he may not enjoy the additional pace he'll see in Shanghai. My assessment of Shanghai's courtroom speed, is as always - twofold. In the last 3 decades of their Shanghai Masters, 81.3% of service games were held, nearly 2% over the ATP Tour tough court mean of 79.4%. Furthermore, there was a fairly high 0.60 aces per game count - also over the hard court average - and I'm anticipating powerful servers to flourish in the conditions, which can be of similar pace to many indoor events. Elite players with historic tournament success Historically, elite players have won this championship. Defending champion Andy Murray is not participating because of his trauma lay-off, and Novak Djokovic is also absent - that the Serb had won three of their four decades before Murray's triumph last year. In reality, you need to go all the way back to find a winner, and Nadal's last appearance in the closing was in that year, even when he had been defeated by Nikolay Davydenko. Read more here: http://www.autoeines.com/follow-the-author/