TheStar 7th Nov'05 PETALING JAYA: The invitational World Cup tournament will make a return to the International Badminton Federation’s (IBF) calendar after a very long absence. The tournament will be played in Yiyang, China, from Dec 14-18 and it offers a total purse of US$250,000. Invitations have been sent out to several countries to name their top players for the tournament, which will be the first international to use the experimental rally point scoring system of 21-point-best-of-three games. The singles events will see a total of 16 entries while the doubles competitions will have eight pairs. The IBF’s event manager, M. Venugopal, confirmed yesterday that the World Cup was the latest event to be included in their calendar for the year. “The organisers had sent out the invitations and the entries will be finalised by end of this month. “It is an invitational tournament giving the top players the opportunity to try out the new rally scoring format,” he said. The World Cup is the third big tournament organised by the China BA this year. They hosted the inaugural China Masters in Beijing in September and the China Open will begin in Guangzhou tomorrow.
