After two back to back Masters tournaments in Malaysia and Indonesia, players now travel up to Bangkok, for the Thailand Masters, a BWF World Tour Super 300 event.
A number of high-ranked players have opted to swerve Thailand, which opens up the draw to others to go deep into the tournament and gain valuable ranking points. In the women’s singles, Carolina Marin is seeded fourth and finds herself in the same half of the draw as the number one seed, Akane Yamaguchi, whom she defeated in the opening round of the Malaysia Masters. Will it be the first title in 2020 for the Spaniard. She faces Korean, Kim Ga Eun in round one.
Line Kjaersfeldt, who had the high of defeating world number one Chen Yufei last week, has a match-up against fifth seed Saina Nehwal to look forward to. The Indian has a great record against the Dane, including two wins in 2019 at the All-England and French Opens. Although Kjaersfeldt showed last week that anything is possible.
Kim Astrup and Anders Rasmussen, after reaching the men’s doubles quarterfinal of the Indonesian Masters, will be coming into the tournament with confidence, especially as they are the sixth seeds. They face emerging Japanese pair, Akira Koga and Taichi Saito in the first round. Following their exit in Jakarta, Astrup wrote on Instagram.
- It was a great experience playing in a packed Istora Senayan. Fajar and Rian are both really skilled badminton players, and I really appreciate competing with them. Thanks for a great battle.
With the withdrawal of home favourites and mixed doubles number one seeds, Dechapol Puavaranukroh and Sapsiree Taerattanachai, Danes Niclas Nohr and Sara Thygesen have been promoted from qualification. They will face fellow Danes Mathias Christiansen and Alexandra Bøje if they both progress through to the second round.
Sixth seeds from England, Marcus Ellis and Lauren Smith will have a re-run of the first round in Jakarta against Russians Rodion Alimov and Alina Davletova. Ellis and Smith, the European Games gold medalists, were then victorious 21-17, 21-10.
For the full seeded entry list and draw, click
here.