Play starts Friday night, the singles will play thru to finals

Saturday starts with doubles. Finals played Saturday night of all events.

A small but good quality field has assembled for the North Island and Northland Badminton Open which starts tomorrow (Friday) in Whangarei with plenty of pressure on a number of the younger competitors.

The tournament sponsored by Big Frog Broadband is a selection event for the world junior champs to be held in Malaysia in October.

A key player to watch, who is still waiting to be allowed to play for is American-born Bjorn Seguin(Waikato) who is aiming for three tournament victories in a row. He triumphed in the New Zealand U23 event in Wellington and last weekend the North Harbour Open final.

Second seed will be Southland’s James Eunson who was a semifinalist in both of those events. Top seeds in the women’s singles will be Auckland’s Clare Chapple and Southland’s Anna Rankin.

Also aiming to capture the eye of the selectors are Waitakere teens, Mary O’Connor and Luke Charlesworth.

A large number of players from the 2007 world junior champs held in West Auckland now make up the bulk of New Zealand’s talent pool and will be challenging for titles, however one older competitor is
Dean Nuttall who is in his mid 20’s and hails from Northland. He was a semifinalist at North Harbour last week, is drawn to play Seguin in the semifinals in Whangarei and is an talented player who withdrew from the NZ High Performance programme earlier this year. He is also the defending Northland Open men’s singles title holder

Nuttall is playing combining with his father, David in the men’s doubles. A title they won last year, however things will be a lot more difficult this time with the likes of Ashraf Dhoray(Auckland) and Eunson as well as the Waikato pair of Michael Fowke and Seguin in the draw.

In the mixed Nuttall is teaming up with his sister, Michelle who was in the past a promising junior.

Playing mixed with his sister, who as a junior showed potential but has not really followed thru with her badminton.

The tournament starts Friday 15 May from with play continuing from 10am on Saturday with the finals from 5pm Saturday, all at the Northland Badminton Centre, Whangarei.