Mew Choo’s fighting display a good warm-up for All-England

KUALA LUMPUR: National top women’s singles shuttler Wong Mew Choo has collected the scalps of China’s top players several times in her career.

And she came very close to adding another in the recent German Open but went down fighting 13-21, 22-20, 13-21 to second seed Wang Xin of China in the quarter-finals.

The fighting display can been considered a good warm-up ahead of the All-England for Mew Choo, who had struggled to find her footing in the last two Opens in South Korea and Malaysia in January.

The All-England begins on Wednesday at Birmingham.

And national singles coach Misbun Sidek feels that Mew Choo is now primed to start her run of wins over the Chinese stars again based on her current motivation.

Misbun believes that Mew Choo can reproduce the form that saw her beating several top Chinese players to emerge as the China Open champion in 2007.

She also did well to beat Xie Xingfang at the 2007 World Championships to reach the quarter-finals. A spate of injuries however, has prevented her from repeating the feat regularly.

Now Misbun is looking forward to her challenge at the All-England where there’s a horde of Chinese players in her half of the draw.

“She is shaping up well for the All-England. There is new determination in her. She has come out of her own frustration at the Malaysian Open,” said Misbun.

“I am confident that she will do well.

“China have so many players in the women’s singles field and all of them are good. It will be the responsibility of Mew Choo and other top players to stop their domination.”

Mew Choo will take on Jiang Yanjiao in the opening round and others in the fray are top seed Wang Yihan, Wang Zhixian and Wang Xin.

In the lower half of the draw are China’s second seed Wang Lin and Lu Lan who will be up against the likes of Tine Rasmussen of Denmark, Juliane Schenk of Germany, Pi Hongyan of France and Saina Nehwal of India – all who have beaten the formidable Chinese players before.

In fact, Schenk showed her prowess by packing off top seed Wang Lin en route to the final of the German Open on Saturday.

Posted by Lucas Liau on 2:47 PM. Filed under News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0