The 2019 Spain Masters is the fourth tournament of the 2019 BWF World Tour and many big names are ready to battle!
Witness top-class badminton
This tournament can undoubtedly be described as the beginning of the preparations for All England 2019 which will be held in 3 weeks. We will witness top-class badminton among some of the world’s best players.
The HSBC BWF World Tour Super 300 tournament will be hosted in Barcelona, Spain, from the 19thto the 24thof April and the Spanish Badminton Federation is excited to take another step as organizers of a major international event: “ It’s a new step forward after the 2018 Europeans in Huelva. Thanks to the hard work back then, everyone in Spain knows what badminton is, what badminton means, its’ values and potential”, Jaime Gomez Development & Communications Manager for the Spanish federation explains.
The grand return
In men’s singles Denmark is considered to be dominant, which is also being supported by the scoreboard where Rasmus Gemke and Anders Antonsen respectively secured Denmark 1st place in 2018 and 2016.
Furthermore, a player to keep an eye on in the women’s singles is LI Xuerui. She is considered to be one of the most successful players of her time. She was a gold medalist at 2012 London Olympic in the women’s singles event. At the Rio Olympics in 2016 Li suffered an injury and was forced to take a break from badminton. She made a comeback in 2018 and it will be interesting to follow her through the tournament.
New faces, young talent and wildcards
In the men’s doubles it will be interesting to see if Boe and Mogensen can manage to get back in top shape and perform at the high level we have seen them perform in before or is it in the past?
Ladies doubles is very open, Koreas 2 pairs in the draw is very strong and top seed Stoeva sisters must be ready in a semifinal clash against Kim/Kong who were runners up in Indonesia Masters only few weeks back. Will it be all Korea in the final?
In mix doubles we see, among other things, the new crowned Danish National Champions Rikke Søby and Mathias Bay-Schmidt, who are new young Danish talents who surprised everyone in the nationals. The constellation is relatively new but they have until this point played badminton at a high level.
In the mix category it is also worth noting that Tontowi Ahmad this year plays with a new partner after the extremely talented four times World Champion and reigning Olympic Champion, Liliyana Natsir, has expressed her intention to retire early in 2019. Here it will be exciting to see if we are going to experience the same level in the future from the new partner Winny Oktavina Kandow.
See full draw here
Last years winners:
MS: Rasmus Gemke (DEN)
WS: Minatsu Mitani (JPN)
MD: Lee Yong Dae/Kim Gi Jung (KOR)
WD: Mayu Matsumoto/Wakana/Nagahara (JPN)
XD: Niclas Nøhr/Sara Thygesen (DEN)
MS seeded players:
| 1 | Viktor Axelsen (DEN) |
| 2 | Rasmus Gemke (DEN) |
| 3 | Anders Antonsen (DEN) |
| 4 | Lu Guangzu (CHN) |
| 5 | Jan O Jorgensen (DEN) |
| 6 | Wang Tzu Wei (TPE) |
| 7 | Hans-Kristian Solberg Vittinghus (DEN) |
| 8 | Rajiv Ouseph (ENG) |
WS seeded players:
| 1 | Han Yue (CHN) |
| 2 | Mia Blichfeldt (DEN) |
| 3 | Cai Yanyan (CHN) |
| 4 | Line Højmark Kjaersfeldt (DEN) |
| 5 | Li Xuerui (CHN) |
| 6 | Chen Xiaoxin (CHN) |
| 7 | Kirsty Gilmour (SCO) |
| 8 | Sayaka Sato (JPN) |
MD seeded pairs:
WD seeded pairs:
XD seeded pairs:
