With 17 days to go until the Sathio Group Australian Badminton Open 2023 begins, the draws have been released and excitement is building. Many big names in badminton will be making the trek down under to play in this HSBC BWF World Tour Super 500 tournament in Sydney, Australia.
Players to watch for will be the two exciting men’s singles players from Indonesia; Anthony Sinisuka Ginting and Jonatan Christie. Korean favourite, An Se Young leads the women’s singles field alongside Ratchanok Intanon (THA) and Pusarla V. Sinhu (IND). The men’s doubles are dominated by Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan while the women’s doubles features the power house countries of Korea, China and Japan. The mixed doubles pairs cover a range of countries, sure to please the expected and excited fans, featuring Japan, China, Korea and Malaysia within the top six.
New Zealand’s only entry is in the men’s doubles is Jack Wang and Ryan Tong. Winners of the Oceania Junior Championships in Melbourne 2019, this will be their first senior tournament together as a pair after they both split with their men’s doubles partner in March 2023. Their qualification match is against the exciting Australian pair of Rizky Hidayat and Frengky Wijaya Putra who were part of the New South Wales team that led their state to the 2023 national title.
Two Australian players have received wildcards into the tournament. Nathan Tang will face up against Priyanshu Rajawat (IND) in the first round, who was the winner of the Orleans Masters 2023 earlier in the year. The other wildcard features in the women’s singles. Seasoned campaigner, Tiffany Ho will relish the opportunity to play against the experienced fourth seed Baiwen Zhang (USA).
Reaching the quarterfinals at the 2022 Australian Open, the Tjonadi sisters, Sydney and Victoria who are both still juniors, will once again play together, starting their campaign in the qualifying draw against Tanisha Crasto and Ashwini Ponnappa (IND). Also hoping to make it into the main draw are Australian Falcon’s, Gronya Somerville and Kaitlyn Ea who are currently sitting at 75 on the world ranking list. After following the badminton circuit for the past six weeks, the highest ranked women’s doubles pair in Oceania will no doubt be excited to use their experience and play at home against Americans Paula Lynn Cao Hok and Lauren Lam.
Having recently won the Mongolia International 2023, Gronya and mixed doubles partner, Kenneth Choo have a current world ranking of 51. They will be hoping to secure a win in qualifying to move into the main draw of the Sathio Group Australian Badminton Open 2023 when they come up against their younger compatriots, Rayne Wang and Angela Yu.
For information about the Sathio Group Australian Badminton Open 2023 click here
