Daren Liew finds a tricky Men’s Singles draw in upcoming Australian Open Grand Prix Gold 2012
Malaysia’s Daren Liew finds a tricky Men’s Singles draw at Australian Open Grand Prix Gold 2012, which is set to take place from April 3-8, at Sydney, Australia.
Daren, who is currently positioned at number 28 in the Men’s Singles world placements, is in his prime form at the moment as he performed impressively well at All England Open Premier Super Series and Swiss Open GP Gold earlier in the ongoing month.
However, Daren will be facing more challenges in the Australian Open where he will face higher ranked shuttlers from the starting round.
His first tough contest will come in the second round where he will be up against the defending champion Sho Sasaki of Japan, who is currently World Number Six.
On paper, Sasaki is better than Daren as the Japanese won the previous two head-to-head meetings.
Nevertheless, Daren is probably playing the best badminton of his professional career at the moment. He showed an impressive improvement in all aspects of his game and is looking forward to maintain his positive run.
According to Daren’s current condition, it will be a crunchy fight against the higher ranked Japanese shuttler. The Malaysian is in a position to create upset as he is fully capable of doing that at the moment.
While talking about his encounter with Sasaki, the Malaysian said that it will be tough to overpower the Japanese as he is a good player.
He said, “It will not be easy because I’ve lost to Sasaki the last two times ... he’s a very good player.”
However, he further added, “But I’m feeling good about my game and I just need to keep on believing in myself and hopefully I’ll pull off an upset.”
If Daren manages to beat Sasaki in the second round, he will probably meet Hu Yun, a talented shuttler from Hong Kong, in the third round of the championship.
Daren is in much better condition now as compared to a couple of year ago. He has got a good experience of playing in international tournaments and has recently shown a greater amount of maturity.
The Malaysian is confident to live up to expectations in Australian Open and get precious ranking points to further improve his position in the world.
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