Kuala Lumpur: After Lee Chong Wei’s withdrawal from the Nanjing World Championships due to a respiratory illness, South Korea’s No. 4 seed Son Wan Ho has also decided to pull out from the tournament citing leg injury.
The Korean badminton national team has confirmed that the World No. 4 player’s condition was deemed unsuitable for competition, therefore, he would not join the Korean team for the Nanjing World Championships that kicks off on July 30th.
Since both Lee Chong Wei and Son Wan Ho were drawn to the bottom half of the men’s singles bracket alongside Kento Momota, the absence of Lee and Son has given World No. 7 Momota a relatively clear passage to the later stages of the competition, including the final.
Oddly enough, the five-time champion Lin Dan, reigning Olympic champion Chen Long and World No. 1 Viktor Axelsen were all grouped in the top half of the draw.
According to the original draw, Kento Momota could potentially face Son Wan Ho in the quarter-finals and Lee Chong Wei in the semi-finals before qualifying for the final. And now, that two major obstacles have unexpectedly cleared for Momota.
Without Lee Chong Wei, the other Malaysian men’s singles player left in the fray is professional shuttler Liew Daren, who plays Indonesia’s Jonatan Christie in the first round.
