What 'luck of the draw' for the 1st quadrant, the toughest one of the lot !?!? Apparently, among the top 8 seeds, Saina has relatively the easiest draw in the opening and 2nd round.
Bad luck for qualifier, Xue Song, should he advance to the main draw where Chen Long awaits him. No good for all the CHN MS who are entirely in the upper half of the draw together with Chou TC, K Srikanth, P Kashyap, K Momota, Lee DK, Tanongsak S, Marc Zwiebler, and Wei Nan, which makes it significantly top heavy.
I'm looking forward to see how LXR would fare in her first top-notch tournament after her injury layoff, and that in the face of very stiff competition from the get-go looking at the draw which just as in the MS appears top heavy with the likes of Zhang BW, Sun Yu, Intanon R, Akane Y, Saina, Liu Xin, Nozomi O, and Wang YH. Also worth noting is WYH and the budding JPN star, Nozomi Okuhara, will cross swords in R1. Likewise for two erstwhile child prodigies, namely Intanon Ratchanok and Akane Yamaguchi, who will face-off in the opening round.
Makes me wonder how many of these crack players relish such a start to the new year's campaign. Wish them best of luck.
