PETALING JAYA: Women’s doubles shuttlers Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah face an uphill battle in the World Tour Finals from Dec 11-15 in Hangzhou after they were placed in a difficult group.
The world No. 6 found themselves with China’s world No. 1 Liu Shengshu-Tan Ning, Japan’s world No. 4 Nami Matsuyama-Chiharu Shida and India’s Treesa Jolly-Gayatri Gopichand (No. 13) in Group A.
Only the top two teams in the group will advance to the last four.
Pearly-Thinaah have only won three times in nine meetings with Shengshu-Tan Ning and once in 11 encounters with Matsuyama-Shida.
Meanwhile, there were better fortunes for mixed doubles pairs Goh Soon Huat-Shevon Lai Jemie and Chen Tang Jie-Toh Ee Wei after both were placed together in Group B with Indonesia’s Dejan Ferdinansyah-Gloria Emanuelle (No. 13) and Japan’s Hiroki Midorikawa-Natsu Saito (No. 21).
The Malaysians have avoided China’s Paris Olympics gold medallists Zheng Siwei-Huang Yaqiong and world No. 2 Jiang Zhenbang-Wei Yaxin, who are both in Group A.
The other pairs in Group A are Hong Kong’s world No. 6 Tang Chun Man-Tse Ying Suet and Taiwan’s world No. 14 Yang Po-hsuan-Hu Ling-fang.
