PETALING JAYA: The pressure will be on women’s doubles shuttlers Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah to justify their status as top seeds in the Thailand Open in Bangkok.
All eyes will be on Pearly-Thinaah in the tourney as they are currently in the midst of a contract standoff with the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) and are expected to have a final round of talks with the national body after the tournament to decide their futures.
Winning the title will be a boost for the world No. 4 pair and might help them make a final decision on whether to sign new contracts and stay in BAM or leave to become independent players.
Pearly-Thinaah last captured a title in the Hong Kong Open last September.
This year, the duo came closest to a title in the Indonesian Masters in January but were denied in the final by South Korea’s Kim Hye-jeong-Kong Hee-yong.
In the absence of several top 10 pairs in the world including China’s world No. 1 Liu Shengshu-Tan Ning and Japan’s world No. 2 Nami Matsuyama-Chiharu Shida, Pearly-Thinaah will be keen to go all the way in Bangkok.
The 2022 French Open champions were originally supposed to play Japan’s Hina Osawa-Akari Sato in the first round today but the latter withdrew from the tourney and have been replaced by India’s Rashmi Ganesh-Sania Sikkandar.
Pearly-Thinaah should have no problems getting past the unheralded Indians and could set up a meeting against tricky Indonesians Siti Fadia Ramadhanti-Lanny Tria in the second round.
Another Indonesian pair and world No. 8 Febriana Dwipuji-Amallia Cahaya and India’s world No. 10 Treesa Jolly-Gayatri Gopichand could also trouble the Malaysians later in the competition.
Meanwhile, Malaysia will also be represented in the women’s doubles by world No. 25 Go Pei Kee-Teoh Mei Xing and world No. 60 Ong Xin Yee-Carmen Ting.
Taiwan’s world No. 53 Chen Su-yu-Hsieh Yi-en stand in the way of Pei Kee-Mei Xing in their opening match while youngsters Xin Yee-Carmen have an uphill battle against Treesa-Gayatri.
