KUALA LUMPUR: Women’s doubles shuttlers Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah are fired up to chase down China’s world No. 1 Liu Shengshu-Tan Ning this year.
World No. 2 Pearly-Thinaah enjoyed a fine 2025 and were rewarded with RM50,000 cash incentive from 100Plus on Monday (Jan 5) after capturing gold in the Thailand SEA Games last month.
Buoyed by the reward, the duo are now looking to overtake their biggest rivals to the coveted No. 1 spot for the first time in their careers.
“We are still far behind in terms of ranking points but we will try to reach world No. 1,” said Pearly after a training session at Axiata Arena in Bukit Jalil ahead of the Malaysian Open which starts on Tuesday (Jan 6).
“We have never won a Super 1000 title and we still find it tough to beat the Chinese pair, so we will work hard on these.
“Being consistent is harder than reaching the top in the first place, so we need to maintain our form.”
To date, Chin Eei Hui-Wong Pei Tty have been the only Malaysian women’s doubles pair to ever reach world No. 1.
The pair were ranked top of the world in 2009.
Pearly-Thinaah currently have 95,016 ranking points while Shengshu-Tan Ning are still comfortably ahead with 110,084 points.
A good performance in the Malaysian Open though will help the former narrow the gap and that’s exactly what the pair are aiming for.
Pearly-Thinaah are also looking to earn a breakthrough after never managing to go beyond the early rounds in the prestigious tournament.
They suffered first round exits in their last three outings in 2023, 2024 and 2025 and made it to the second round in 2022.
“We have never performed well in this competition. We want the fans to watch us longer this time,” said Pearly.
“There are high expectations on us as we are the second seeds but we will turn this into motivation.”
Pearly-Thinaah will open their campaign on Wednesday (Jan 7) against India’s world No. 53 Rutaparna Panda-Swetaparna Panda.
