BWF China Masters 2023: Lee Zii Jia keeps World Tour Final hopes alive with clear win; seeds fall in both singles draws
Lee's slim hopes of making December's Finals in Hangzhou are still alive after a straight-games win over Lu Guangzu in Shenzhen.
Badminton
Will Lee Zii Jia make the badminton World Tour Finals 2023 next month? It's not impossible.
The Malaysian's outside hopes at qualifying for the season-ending event in Hangzhou, People's Republic of China, were kept alive with a key win at the BWF China Masters 2023, in Shenzhen on Thursday (23 November), live on Olympic Channel via Olympics.com in selected territories.
Lee took down home favourite Lu Guangzu 21-10, 21-12 in 40 minutes to book a men's singles quarter-final meeting against his closest rival for a Finals spot, Nishimoto Kenta of Japan, who beat current world champion Kunlavut Vitidsarn of Thailand 21-15, 21-23, 21-10 in a 78-minute marathon.
Nishimoto sits 1,760 ranking points ahead of Lee and is already guaranteed to overtake Lee's fellow Malaysian Ng Tze Yong for the eighth and last Finals place. If the Japanese wins their quarter-final match, Lee's hopes would also end as he is not entered in the last regular-season tournament, next week's India International.
Should Lee win their quarter-final match, he is still not guaranteed to qualify for the Finals, as Nishimoto is set to be the second seed in India, where he could earn up to 7,000 points for winning the tournament.
Denmark's Anders Antonsen, currently seventh in the Race to Finals ranking, lost on Thursday, which means if Lee manages to make it all the way to the final in Shenzhen – something he has done twice this season on the World Tour – the Malaysian would earn enough points to overtake Antonsen.
Matches from the BWF China Masters 2023 are available to stream live on Olympic Channel via Olympics.com and the official Olympics app for mobile devices, subject to territorial restrictions.
Seeds felled in Shenzhen at 2023 China Masters
Elsewhere, there were shock results abound.
Men's second seed Anthony Ginting of Indonesia was dumped out by Chinese Taipei's Lin Chun-yi 21-18, 21-17, and home seventh seed Shi Yuqi was felled by Frenchman Christo Popov 21-15, 21-19.
That leaves just two seeds left in the men's draw: Naraoka Kodai and H.S. Prannoy, the third and eighth seeds who face each other in the quarter-finals.
There was also carnage for seeded players in the women's singles, with the first, fourth, and seventh seeds all falling.
Top-ranked An Seyoung suffered a straight-games undoing by Wang Zhiyi 21-12, 21-16; Chinese Taipei's fourth-seeded Tai Tzu-ying retired while 8-11 down in the deciding game of her clash against Zhang Yiman; and Indonesia's Gregoria Mariska Tunjung was downed by Japan's former world number one Okuhara Nozomi 21-12, 15-21, 21-16.