Loh Kean Yew begins title defence by beating Spain’s Abian in first round of World Championships

SINGAPORE: Badminton world champion Loh Kean Yew began his title defence on Monday (Aug 22) with a straightforward win over Spain’s Pablo Abian.

The Singaporean beat world number 58 Abian 21-12, 21-12 in 29 minutes to progress to the second round of the BWF World Championships. This year’s tournament is held in Tokyo, Japan.

This is the second career meeting between both players. Loh beat Abian in straight games at the Dutch Open last year.

The 25-year-old, who is currently ranked eighth in the world, will next face Guatemala’s Kevin Cordon.

At last year’s World Championships, Loh went on a fairytale run which saw him upset a number of higher ranked players including Olympic champion Viktor Axelsen en route to winning the title.

Loh is Singapore’s only representative in the men’s singles after Jason Teh was eliminated in the opening round. World ranked 86 Teh lost 13-21, 14-21 to Netherlands’ Mark Caljouw.

In the men’s doubles, the pair of Terry Hee and Loh Kean Hean also started their campaign with a win. They beat France’s Christo Popov and Toma Junior Popov 21-17, 21-18 and will next face Malaysia's Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi.

Hee and Jessica Tan however advanced to the next round of the mixed doubles via walkover. The husband-wife duo who recently won Commonwealth Games gold in the event, will next face Japan’s twelfth seeds Yuki Kaneko and Misaki Matsutomo.

The women’s singles event will be without Singapore’s top ranked women’s singles player Yeo Jia Min who announced that she would be pulling out of the tournament last week.

In an Instagram post, the world number 18 said that she had contracted COVID-19 - her second time getting the virus -  after returning from the Commonwealth Games.

While Yeo has since recovered, she noted that her polymerase chain reaction test still returned a positive result, meaning she would not be able to enter Japan.