After four years! Famous players gathered at the China Open Badminton Championship, and the national badminton mixed doubles and women's doubles competed to defend their titles

Source: Global Times

Following the World Championships in Denmark, which ended at the end of August, another top badminton event in the world, the China Open Badminton Open, kicked off on the 5th at the Changzhou Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium. The China Badminton Open, the BWF Tour Super 1000 event, is held again after four years, and the winner of this tournament can earn 12,000 Paris Olympic points, including the world's top 15 singles players and the world's top 10 doubles combinations. In the first matchday matchday, the Chinese women's singles team Wang Zhiyi, Zhang Yiman, Han Yue, Gao Fangjie, mixed doubles pair Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong, women's doubles pair Chen Qingchen/Jia Yifan and men's doubles pair Liang Weiheng/Wang Chang all successfully defeated their opponents to advance to the second round, men's singles Weng Hongyang, mixed doubles No. 7 seeds Jiang Zhenbang/Wei Yaxin suffered a round.

Singles: "Hosts mainly break the championship drought"

After the World Championships in Denmark, Guoyu went straight to Changzhou to start preparing for the China Open, and they fielded their strongest team, aiming to compete for Olympic points at home. At the 2019 China Open, Guoyu ended with two gold medals with the outstanding performances of Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong and Chen Qingchen/Jia Yifan. Looking forward to this tournament, although the two ace events of Guoyu still have advantages, it is not easy to complete the home championship, and it is difficult to achieve new breakthroughs in the three disciplines of men's singles, women's singles and men's doubles.

In the men's singles, the Chinese team participated in the competition. The signature shows that Guoyu's Zhao Junpeng, Lu Guangzu, No. 6 seed Li Shifeng and No. 8 seed Shi Yuqi are four people in the upper half of the area, and Weng Hongyang is alone in the lower half. Since 2017, the men's singles of the national badminton has not won the tournament, and Li Shifeng and Shi Yuqi are the best hopes to break this embarrassing record. Among them, Shi Yuqi will face the challenge of Dane Johns in the first round, and the winner of Denmark's Gemke and Thailand's Wang Gaolun in the second round, and his potential opponent in the quarterfinals is Japan's Naraoka Kōdai.

Naraoka Kōdai has recently become a bitter boss of Shi Yuki, defeating Naraoka Kodai in the semifinals of the Sudirman Cup in May, Shi Yuki has lost four consecutive games against Naraoka Kodai at the Singapore Open, Indonesia Open, Japan Open and World Championships. Li Shifeng has a bright prospect of reaching the quarter-finals, but it is possible to meet the No. 2 seed, Indonesia's Jin Ting, in the eighth and fourth positions, which is a challenge for Li Shifeng.

In the women's singles, the Chinese team has 6 players. No. 3 seed Chen Yufei and No. 5 seed He Bingjiao are both in the bottom half and are in the same 3/4 zone, which means that at most only one of the two can reach the semifinals. The district also includes Thai sister Ratchano and Japanese star Akane Yamaguchi. In the 1/4 area where Wang Zhiyi and Han Yue are located, there is a world's first sister and South Korean star An Zhiying. In the 2/4 district, there are Zhang Yiman and Gao Fangjie, and the two need to break through the two levels of Chinese Taipei's sister Dai Ziying and Spain's Marin.

Malaysia's "Sin Chew Daily" said that as the host, China, need to break the 6-year men's singles championship drought and the 8-year women's singles championship drought, the last time they had a men's singles player won the China Open, or Chen Long in 2017, and the women's singles was Li Xuerui in 2015, "If Chinese players can win the Chinese Open, it will greatly increase their confidence in fighting for medals at the Hangzhou Asian Games."

Mixed doubles and women's doubles fought to defend their titles

In mixed doubles, Guoyu currently has defending champions Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong, No. 3 seeds Feng Yanzhe/Huang Dongping, and emerging pair Cheng Xing/Chen Fanghui. Zheng Siwei/Hwang Yaqiong may meet the No. 5 seed, South Korean pair Seo Seung-jae/Choi Yoo-hyun in the 1/4 final. The two sides have met 10 times before, with Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong holding a 9-1 advantage, but in the recently concluded World Championship final, Seo Seung-jae/Choi Yoo-hyun won.

The Chinese women's doubles team has five pairs competing, and four-time world champions and defending champions Chen Qingchen/Jia Yifan have the best hope of winning the title. The "Van Dust" and "Post-00s" duo Li Yijing/Luo Xumin are in the top half of the women's doubles, and their main opponents are No. 4 seeds Mayu Matsumoto/Kazu Kona Nagahara from Japan, No. 5 seeds Yuki Fukushima/Saika Hirota and No. 7 seeds Nao Matsuyama/Chiyo Shida. The other three pairs of Guoyu women's doubles Zhang Shuxian/Zheng Yu, Tan Ning/Liu Shengshu and Li Wenmei/Liu Xuanxuan are in the lower half.

In the three doubles events, the probability of winning the men's doubles championship is relatively small, and the four pairs of men's doubles participating in this tournament are the original team of the World Championships. No. 3 seeds Leung Wai Keng/Wang Chang and No. 7 seeds Liu Yuchen / Ou Weiyi are both in the 1/4 zone and have the potential to stage a civil war in the 1/4 final. Ren Xiangyu/Tan Qiang, He Jiting/Zhou Haodong are in the lower half of the zone, which includes the Xinke Men's Doubles World Champion, South Korean pair Seo Seung-jae/Kang Min-hyuk and Indian strongman Ranji Reddy/Shetty.

An Zhiying sword points to the Grand Slam

Malaysia's Straits Times quoted Malaysian badminton commentator James Selvaraj as saying on the 5th that "the China Open will be as difficult to play as the World Championships because it is a Super 1000 event." World brother and Denmark's Anselon has his eyes on the champion, and he hopes to prove himself again with the men's singles title of the China Open.

In addition, Thailand's Kunravut, the winner of this year's World Championships men's singles champion, withdrew, and the men's singles competition pattern of this tournament is more open. Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao said on the 5th that as the No. 7 seed in the tournament, Singapore's brother Luo Jianyou defeated France's 21-year-old rising star Christo Popov in the first round.

The first sister of the women's singles world, An Zhiying, had good luck and only met Dai Ziying, Chen Yufei and Akane Yamaguchi after the semifinals. An has won the Super 1000 twice before, this year's All England Championship and the 2021 Indonesia Open. An has won eight titles this year, equalling the record for the highest women's singles season in the world badminton held by national badminton stars Li Xuerui and Dai Ziying. Yonhap News Agency said that if Ahn Zhiying reaches the top of the China Open, it may only be a matter of time before she catches the 11th title set by Japanese men's singles player Kento Momota, who set a season-high 11 titles in 2019. An Zhiying, who has become the world's number one women's singles player, pointed to the Grand Slam, that is, after winning the World Championships, she won the Asian Games, the Olympic Games and the Asian Championships.

Malaysia's Lee Zijia and Wong Chi Dung are both fighting to qualify for next year's Paris Olympics. "Lee and Wong have to be strong and ready to face any fighter, and they need to play at a high level to go further in the game. The men's singles world No. 14 brother Lee Zijia faced Japan's Kodai Naraoka, who reached the final of this year's World Championships in the first round.

After India's Goplanoy upset the first round of the China Open, the Indian Legion still has hopes of winning the title. Indian media said that in the men's doubles competition, title contender and No. 2 seed Ranki Reddy/Shetty will return to the Chinese Open, hoping to recover from the loss in the 1/4 final of the World Championships.