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our years after being established as one of the Badminton World Federation’s (BWF) Superseries tournaments in 2007, the Indonesia Open badminton championship has been upgraded as the second-highest prized badminton tournament in the world, offering a total prize money of US$600,000 from a previous $250,000.

The current total prize of the annual event, which has been held since 1982, is the second-highest prize of the BWF’s five Superseries Premier events.

The now-called Djarum Indonesia Open Superseries Premier is only to second the $1.2 million Korean Open Superseries Premier, and followed by the China Open, the All England, and the Denmark Open, each offering $350,000 prize money.

Amid the ever-vanishing hopes for the rise of Indonesia’s declining badminton achievements, the championship will be showcased next week from June 21 to 26 in Jakarta.

Beside the large sum on offer, another specialty of the Super Series Premier event is the ruling of the BWF that all world top10 rank shuttlers are obliged to compete. Players withdrawing from the event will be penalized $250.

“Almost all of the world top 10 shuttlers are listed to play. Unless they suffer some kind of injury, Lee Chong Wei [world number one], Lin Dan [world number two] and Peter Hoeg Gade [world number five], among others, will be here,” head of the organizing committee and secretary-general of the Indonesian Badminton Association (PBSI) Jacob Rusdianto said on Wednesday.

“Obviously, with its higher prestige, this tournament will also offer much larger points, which could be very determining to qualify for the London Olympics next year,” said head of national doubles coach Christian Hadinata, expressing his hope that the top national shuttlers with Olympic medals in mind are expected to snatch as many points as possible for better seeding in the Olympics.

A champion of a Superseries Premier event will get a boost of 11,000 points all at once, while the runner-ups receive 9,350 points, which is greater than the 9,200 points for the winner of the Superseries event.

Seventy-three Indonesian shuttlers, consisting of 38 male and 25 female players, will compete among the overall 290 shuttlers from 27 participating countries.

With all the tempting prize and points on offer and the tough competitors, PBSI chairman Djoko Santoso acknowledged the difficulty for the PBSI to set any target.

“In the early round draw for this event, some of our top shuttlers already face seeded opponents. Hopefully, with a good fighting spirit to win the first rounds, they will have a bigger chance afterward,” said Djoko.

Mixed doubles Olympic hopefuls Liliyana Natsir and Tontowi Ahmad, seeded fourth, will face a tough South Korean pair of Lee Yong-dae and Ha Jung-eun in their opener.

At the Beijing Olympics, Liliyana and former partner Nova Widianto won silver, as did pair Tri Kusharyanto and Minarti Timur at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The Indonesia Open was sponsored by cigarette company PT Djarum from 2004. This year, it will be co-sponsored by the SGX mainboard-listed OSIM, which is a global leader in branded well-being and healthy lifestyle products.