BADMINTON Preview: All five no. 1-ranked players and teams in Singapore Open

The BWF World Tour’s Asian swing continues this week at the Singapore Indoor Stadium for the Singapore Open, held continuously since 1987. It has hosted many of the top players each year and 2019 is no exception: all five of players or teams ranked no. 1 in the BWF World Rankings are entered and at the top of the seedings:

Men’s Singles:
1. Kento Momota (JPN)
2. Tien Chen Chou (TPE)
3. Viktor Axelsen (DEN)

Men’s Doubles:
1. Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo (INA)
2. Junhui Li/Yuchen Liu (CHN)
3. Takeshi Kamura/Keigo Sonoda (JPN)

Women’s Singles:
1. Tzu Ying Tai (TPE)
2. Nozomi Okuhara (JPN)
3. Akane Yamaguchi (JPN)

Women’s Doubles:
1. Yuki Fukushima/Sayaka Hirota (JPN)
2. Misaki Matsutomo/Ayaka Takahashi (JPN)
3. Mayu Matsumoto/Wakana Nagihara (JPN)

Mixed Doubles:
1. Siwei Zhang/Yaqiong Huang (CHN)
2. Yuta Watanabe/Arisa Higashino (JPN)
3. Dechapol Puavaranukroh/Sapsiree Taerattanachai (THA)

The men’s Singles tournament is especially noteworthy, with the 2008-12 Olympic champ, Dan Lin (CHN) and Rio winner Long Chen (CHN) also in the field. They faced off in the final of last week’s Malaysia Open, with Lin the winner after battling injuries for more than a year.

There are four defending champions returning: Chou in men’s Singles, Japan’s Sayaka Takahashi in women’s Singles, Ayako Sakuramoto/Yukiko Takahata (JPN) in women’s Doubles and Soon Huat Goh/Shevon Jemie Lai (MAS) in Mixed Doubles.

Former champs in the field include B. Sai Praneeth (IND: 2017) and Momota (2015) in the men’s Singles and Ratchanok Intanon (THA: 2016) and Tai (2017) in the women’s Singles.

Prize money for this Super 500-level tournament has $26,625-13,490-5,147.50 for the top three places in Singles (and more down to 32nd place) and $28,045-13,490-4,970 for the Doubles medal winners (and on down to 32nd). Look for results here.