KUALA LUMPUR: National men’s top doubles player, Aaron Chia, hopes he and his partner Soh Wooi Yik will open their campaign this season with a flying start at the Malaysian Open 2024 scheduled to take place at the Axiata Arena from Jan 9 to 14.
Without revealing any specific target for the tournament, Aaron is instead determined to put up his best performance before his home fans at the Super 1000 championship.
“So far preparations (Malaysian Open 2024) are all going fine. It is quite important for us to perform well especially in our home ground,” he told reporters after the training session here today.
Aaron-Wooi Yik’s best achievement at the Malaysian Open was in the 2022 edition when they qualified for the semi-finals before losing to Japan’s Takuro Hoki-Yugo Kobayashi, 21-23, 9-21.
After often failing to meet the target set in previous tournaments, Aaron finally left it to the fans to set the correct target for the 2022 world champion pair.
He said this includes the time frame for them to reach the status of world number one doubles in the future.
“I think that (world number one) is always our target but the time will come. I want to say a lot but I can’t as people may comment that wanting to be world number one is just talk.
“Because when you say you want to reach your target but in the end you can’t, so I really don’t like to talk about this and just play for myself,” he said.
For the record, the world number four pair were ranked second in the world earlier last year, which was their best position in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings so far.
In the meantime, Aaron hopes that a holiday with his family in Hong Kong before Christmas will make him feel more refreshed for the new season after a busy schedule throughout last year.
Aaron-Wooi Yik who are the third seeds will face unseeded Danish pair, Rasmus Kjaer-Frederik Sogaard in the first round of the Malaysian Open 2024. – BERNAMA
