Badminton BWF World Championships 2023 draw: Jonatan Christie to face unseeded Lee Zii Jia in first round, defending champ Axelsen faces Nhat Nguyen
Malaysia's Lee faces a tough test in Copenhagen after missing out on being seeded in men's singles. In women's singles and all three doubles categories, the 16 seeds in each event have a bye to the second round.
Badminton
The draw for badminton's 2023 BWF World Championships has thrown up a tasty first-round match when the event begins in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 August.
With seedings for the tournament awarded to the top 16 in the world rankings as of 1 August 2023, Malaysia's former world number 2 Lee Zii Jia – who at 17th was unable to be seeded in men's singles – has been paired against fifth seed Jonatan Christie of Indonesia in the pick of the first-round matches.
Zii Jia, whose semi-final run at last week's Australian Open pushed him up to 13th in the world, just a week too late, now faces the familiar Christie for the eighth time in their careers. His Indonesian opponent holds a 4–3 career head-to-head advantage.
Top men's seed and defending world and Olympic champion Viktor Axelsen will begin his campaign in front of his home Danish fans against Ireland's Nhat Nguyen.
Meanwhile, 2021 world champion Loh Kean Yew of Singapore, seeded seventh, meets Spain's Pablo Albian, while Indonesian second seed Anthony Ginting has been paired against Danylo Bosniuk of Ukraine.
The men's singles competition is the only one of the five events in Copenhagen in which 64 players or pairs will take part, with the other four all featuring 48 entries.
That means that women's singles top seed An Seyoung of Republic of Korea, defending champion Yamaguchi Akane of Japan, and Olympic champion Chen Yufei of People's Republic of China all receive byes to the second round along with their fellow seeds.
An will face either Hungarian Vivien Sandorhazi or Malaysia's Goh Jin Wei in the second round, while Yamaguchi is due to play either Australia's Tiffany Ho or Türkiye's Neslihan Yigit. Chen has a second-round clash against either Kisona Selvaduray of Malaysia or Pai Yu-po of Chinese Taipei awaiting her.