VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam’s top badminton player Nguyen Tien Minh is seeded No 10 for next week’s Macau Open. Minh, who jumped from 24th to 19th in the World Badminton Federation’s rankings last week, is the only Vietnamese representative at the tournament,

Nguyen Tien Minh.

As a seed, Minh will earn a bye to the first round, where his opponent will be the winner of the qualifying round’s fourth match.

If he wins his opening match, as expected, his next rival will be the winner of the match between host Lon Weng Lo and China’s Qicheng Lu, both relatively unknown internationally.

If he progresses to the third round, Minh will meet world No 3 and Macau Open No 2 seed Bao Chunlai of China.

Minh, who became the first Vietnamese badminton player to compete in the Olympics when he went to Beijing last month, has been striving to make it into the world top 20 over the last few months.

Last week, he successfully defended his title in the National Badminton Singles Championship in Bac Giang Province.

Earlier, the HCM City-based athlete advanced to the quarter-finals of the Chinese Taipei Grand Prix Gold Open 2008.

Although Olympic champion Lin Dan of China will not contest the Macau Open, a lot of other top players will be attending, such as China’s Jin Chen, Taufik Hidayat and No 8 Simon Santoso of Indonesia who won last week’s Taiwan Open and Andrew Smith from England.

Despite registering to compete, the world No 1 Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia said he was not sure if he would compete in Macau.

“I want to rest up and readjust myself before deciding when I play next,” Lee said.

Lee lost 17-21, 11-21 in the quarter-finals of the Japan Open to Indonesia’s Sony Dwi Kuncoro on Sunday.

“I was trapped by Sony’s rhythm and I couldn’t keep up with his speed,” he said, after losing in just 41 minutes after a run of unforced errors. “I couldn’t move as I wanted to and I really hated that.”

His coach Misbun Sidek said Lee had had the flu a week earlier.

“He was struggling. Normally, he never struggles and he just plays his game. However, he was still good enough to reach the quarter-finals,” Sidek said.

(Source: Viet Nam News)