Sydney: Malaysia’s World No. 2 Lee Zii Jia stayed on course for his quest to earn a ticket to the Badminton World Federation (BWF) World Tour Finals when he eased past Australia’s Rio Agustino 21-9, 21-11 in the first round of Australian Open on Wednesday.
Lee will meet Lu Guang Zu from China in the second round. The 24-year-old Lee would need to beat Lu on Thursday to unseat the Chinese player who is currently occupying the last spot of the BWF World Tour Finals rankings.
According to BWF, at the end of the BWF World Tour circuit, the top eight players/pairs in the BWF World Tour standing of each discipline, with a maximum of two players/pairs from the same country, are required to play in a final tournament known as the BWF World Tour Finals. Currently, Lu Guang Zu is at the No. 8 spot in the men’s singles category with a total of 56,310 points while Lee is at the No. 9 spot with a total of 54,930 points.
Even if Lee manages to outlast Lu in the second round, that’s still not enough for Lee to qualify for the Finals. He would need to at least advance to the Australian Open semi-finals to be eligible for the year-end event which was relocated to Bangkok, Thailand from Guangzhou, China.
Lu, on the other hand, defeated Tommy Sugiarto from Indonesia 21-18, 21-17 in the first round.
Meanwhile, World No. 33 Malaysian player Ng Tze Yong also moved into the next round after defeating another Australian player, Jacob Schueler 21-13, 21-15, to face Heo Kwang Hee from South Korea.
Also entered the second round was World No. 53 Soong Joo Ven. He overcame Adam Dolman from Australia 21-12, 21-12 to play Ikhsan Leonardo Imanuel Rumbay of Indonesia in the second round.
Malaysia’s men’s pair – Ong Yew Sin/Teo Ee Yi who currently ranked No. 3 in the World Tour Finals rankings and have confirmed a spot at the year-end event, registered their first-round win over Adam Jeffrey/Dylan Soedjasa from New Zealand 21-12, 21-15.
Ong/Teo are scheduled to meet another New Zealand pair, Ricky Cheng/Jack Wang in the second round.
In the women’s singles event, Goh Jin Wei became Malaysia’s only women’s singles player to make the secondt round after edging past Tanya Hemanth of India 21-15, 21-16 in 32 minutes.
Goh will meet Anwesha Gowda also from India on Thursday. Selvaduray Kisona and Sonia Cheah were both eliminated from the tournament after being defeated by their respective opponents in the first round.
