2011 BMW Malaysian Open gets underway in Kuala Lumpur today
The 2011 BMW Malaysian Open will be held in Kuala Lumpur from 28th February to 6th March at the Bukit Kiara Equestrian & Country Resort. The Malaysian Open, which is also known as the Malaysian Tennis Classic, is an international 250 series event and is affiliated with the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).
The tournament format includes both singles and doubles championships and will see 16 doubles teams and 32 singles players participating in a knock out competition over the course of seven days. The last direct entry into the draw was awarded to Noppawan Lertcheewakarn of Thailand, who was ranked number 181 at the cut-off date.
The 2011 edition of this event offers prize money of $220,000 and valuable ranking points. World class players such as Marion Bartoli, Dinara Safina, Kimko Date-Krumm, Jelena Dokic, Francesca Schiavone and China’s Shai Peng will compete in a bid to dethrone last year’s champion Alisa Kleybanova of Russia.
Eight players will be seeded from the singles draw. All of the eight seeds will be separated in the draw so they play two rounds against unseeded lower-ranked players before they can face each other in the quarter-finals. Malaysian Open authorities allocated the seeding according to the WTA rankings released on 21st February before the draw was made.
The 2011 Malaysian Open women’s singles seeds are Francesca Schiavone (1), Marion Bartoli (2), Alisa Kleybanova (3),Jarmila Groth (4),Lucie Safarova (5), Ayumi Morita (6),Kimko Date-Krumm (7), Bojana Jovanovski (8). The three wild card entrants are Urszula Radwanska, Franscesca Schiavone and Jarmila Groth.
The four players who will be included as qualifiers, following a 32-player qualifying tournament are A. Kremer, S. Sun, Jingjing Lu and T.Luzhanska. Kremer defeated Voskoboeva in an exciting three set match 4-6, 7-6 and 6-3. Meanwhile Sun Shengnan eased past Luangnam 6-4, 7-5; while Jingjing Lu secured an easy win over J. Moore 6-2, 6-3. Luzhanska won against Kucova 2-6, 6-3 and 6-3 to make it into the tournament.
The Kuala Lumpur Tennis Championships have earned a lot of praise in the ATP World Tour Supervisors report recently handed over to Tournament Director Nick Freyer.
ATP Supervisor Tom Barnes commented in the report, "Excellent court. Very professionally laid out and dressed. Surface was better this year... Good to have the same DJ back as his changeover music was tasteful and stimulating."
Barnes further stated, "You have an excellent team here and they love working here and it shows. You are the 'happy tournament'."
The action and thrills of this exciting tennis tournament will continue on all three hard courts from tomorrow, as the seeded players begin their foray into the competition.
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