Players lining up for the New Zealand Badminton Open to be held on Auckland's North Shore starting tomorrow are in good form after dominating the titles at the big Australian Open over the weekend.
The fact four title winners from the US$120,000 tournament in Sydney are taking part in Auckland's US$50,000 event, sponsored by Sky City, has significantly added to the strength of the field of 250 players from 19 countries.
Unseeded Houwei Tian from China, a former world junior champion, won the singles title in Sydney.
He will also be unseeded in Auckland and takes on fifth seed Anand Pawar from India in the first round in the feature match on day one.
The other title winners in Australia were all Indonesian pairs in the men's and women's doubles and the mixed and all will be playing this week at the North Shore Events Centre.
The top men's singles seed is former world No3 Simon Santoso from Indonesia who sits at No21 in the world. The No1 Kiwi man is Joe Wu. The women's main draw singles is headed by Taipei's Hsiao Ma Pai with a ranking of 21 as top seed.
