HYDERABAD: World number six and India’s big hope Saina Nehwal has got a bye in the women’s singles first round before meeting the winner of the Olkga Konon (Poland)-Anastasia Prokopenko (Russia) match in the second round of the badminton World Championship that will be held at SAAP Indoor Stadium from August 10 to 16.
The draws were released at New Delhi on Tuesday evening. “It is a good draw but all the matches in worlds are tough,’’ said Saina, who is seeded sixth in this meet.
The Indian star runs into a possible clash with tenth seed Petya Nedetcheva of Bulgaria in the fourth round. The other big players on her way would be third seed and former number one Tine Rasmussen of Denmark.
Top seed Mi Zhou of Hong Kong, who also gets a first round bye, has a potential clash with 14th seed Mew Choo Wong of Malaysia in the third round. Second seed Lin Wang of China, who lost to Saina in the Indonesia Super Series final, is in the bottom half.
Her first big match would be against 12th seed Hyd Young Hwang (Korea) in the third round.
Among the other Indian women, Aditi Mutatkar faces 11th seed Julian Schenk of Germany in the first round match while wild card entry Sayale Gokhale meets Jie Yao of Netherlands.
In the men’s draw, 15th seed Chetan Anand, runner-up of the 2008 India Open Grand Prix, has Ji Hoon Hong of Korea in the first-round match. If he wins, he will meet the winner of Stilian Makarski (Bulgaria) and Alistair Casey (Scotland).
In the third round, he has a possible clash with sixth seed Sony Dwi Kuncoro of Indonesia. Incidentally, Anand had beaten Kuncoro in the Denmark Open Super Series last year.
However, national champion Aravind Bhat opens his campaign against ninth seed Yu Hsing Hsieh in the first round while wild card entry P Kashyap has comparatively easy first round match when he meets Ali Shahhosseni of Iraq.
Top seed Chong Wei Lee has no first round bye and meets Dieter Domke of Germany. His first big clash could be against 14th seed Tien Min Nguyen of Vietnam.
Second seed Chen Jen begins his campaign against Netherlands’ Eri Pang of Netherlands. Third seed Peter Hoeg Gade of Netherlands is up against Valerly Atraschenkov of Ukraine in the first round while India Open Grand Prix Gold winner Taufiq Hidayat starts his tournament against Zi Liang Derek Wong of Singapore.
In the mixed doubles event, V Diju and Jwala Gutta, World number seven and ranked eighth in the World Championship, have got a first round bye. The Indian pair clash with Jien Guo Ong and Sook Chin Chang of Malaysia in the second round.
Sanave Thomas and Rupesh Kumar take on tenth seed Kenichi Hayakawa and Kenta Kazuno of Japan in the very first round match in the men’s doubles.
