Kuala Lumpur: Lee Chong Wei, Viktor Axelsen, Lin Dan and Chen Long are among star names to compete at the Malaysia Masters Badminton Championships 2018 what will be held at Axiata Arena, Bukit Jalil from Jan 16 to 21.
Angus Ng Ka Long of Hong Kong will also try to defend his men’s singles title by joining the crowd including South Korea’s Son Wan Ho, and Taiwan’s Chou Tien Chen.
In women’s competition, Taiwan’s World No. 1 Tai Tzu Ying, will have to fight it out to go further as she was drawn into the same half as Olympic Champion Carolina Marin of Spain, and defending champion Saina Nehwal of India.
Although the World No. 1 men’s doubles pair Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo are not competing at the tournament, that did not make the tournament less attractive. In fact, there’s still a lot of excitement with names such as Goh V Shem-Tan Wee Kiong (Malaysia), Mathias Boe-Carsten Mogensen (Denmark), Li Jun Hui-Liu Yuchen and Liu Cheng-Zhang Nan (China) in the men’s doubles discipline.
Mixed doubles pairs from the host country such as the Rio Olympic silver medalists Chan Peng Soon/Goh Liu Ying, World No. 11 Tan Kian Meng/Lai Pei Jing and World No. 13 Goh Soon Huat/Shevon Jemie Lai will surely receive a lot of support from the Malaysian fans.
The Malaysian Masters, from Jan 16-21, has been upgraded to Grade Two Level Four tournament under the revised Badminton World Federation (BWF) tournament calendar. It offers total cash prize of US$350,000 (about RM1.5 million).
