New date but same status for Malaysian Open

As expected, the Malaysian Open badminton tournament has been postponed but it will remain as one of the Olympic Games qualifiers.

In a statement released by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) yesterday, the Malaysian Open will now take place from May 25-30. Initially, it was slated from March 31-April 4.

The Singapore Open has also been moved to June 1-6, making it the last Olympic qualifying tournament.

With the latest changes in their calendar, the world body have also extended the closing date for the Tokyo Olympics qualifying period to June 15, instead of at the end of April. The Olympics qualifying period starts with the Swiss Open from March 2-7.

Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) secretary Datuk Kenny Goh is happy with the BWF’s decision to allocate dates within the Olympics qualifying period for the home tournament.

“It has given us more time to prepare but it will still cost us more because of the standard operating procedure requirements,” said Kenny.

“We will try to work within the budget, there is some assistance from BWF too.”

The BWF have allocated US$100,000 for the hosting of the Malaysian Open.

“The world body have also allowed us to reduce the price money and sanction fee. The subsidy from BWF is for sanitisation and for us to run Covid tests.

“We’ll try to ask more from them,” added Kenny.

The prize money for the second-tier Malaysian Open has been reduced from US$750,000 (RM3.03mil) to US$600,000 (RM2.43mil).

Meanwhile, the Malaysian Masters, scheduled from April 1-6, has also been postponed until further notice.