Nozomi Okuhara, women’s singles champion in 2018, will take Pusarla V. Sindhu’s place in the VICTOR Hong Kong Open 2023 main draw.

Her first-round opponent will be Indonesian world No.33 Putri Kusuma Wardani.

This marks Okuhara’s return to a Super 500 event after January’s Indonesia Masters, where she lost her opening round match in three games to He Bing Jiao.

In 2018, Okuhara defeated Ratchanok Intanon 21-19 24 22 in the final to win her only Hong Kong Open title.

The following players have also been promoted to the main draw.

Men’s singles

1. Chia Hao Lee (Kidambi Srikanth)
2. Kantaphon Wangcharoen (fourth seed Kodai Naraoka)
3. Misha Zilberman (third seed Kunlavut Vitidsarn)

Women’s singles

1. Aakarshi Kashyap (Michelle Li)

Men’s doubles

1. Low Hang Yee/Ng Eng Cheong (Akira Koga/Taichi Saito)
2. Junaidi Arif/Roy King Yap (He Ji Ting/Zhou Hao Dong)
3. Christian Bernardo/Alvin Morada (Ren Xiang Yu/Tan Qiang)
4. Joshua Magee/Paul Reynolds (third seeds Takuro Hoki/Yugo Kobayashi)

Mixed doubles

1. Chan Peng Soon/Cheah Yee See (top seeds Yuta Watanabe/Arisa Higashino)
2. Adnan Maulana/Nita Violina Marwah (Mathias Thyrri/Amalie Magelund)

Click here to view the updated draw.

VICTOR Hong Kong Open 2023 starts tomorrow, with the first qualification match scheduled at 9am Kuala Lumpur time (UTC +8).

Fun fact: Okuhara also finished runner-up in 2014 and 2015.