Vietnamese star Nguyen Tien Minh served his way to a big win Thursday, securing a place in the final 16 at the 2007 Robot Badminton Challenge after he whipped a Malaysian contender 2-0 Thursday.

At Ho Chi Minh City’s Phan Dinh Phung sports house, the world’s number 54th Tien Minh surpassed Lim Fang Yang 21/17 and 21/16 in two opening sets of the game to book his name in the last round of 16, beginning at 2pm Friday.

He was drawn to take on Indonesian Alamsyah Yunus, who defeated him 2-0 at Singapore Open three weeks ago. Alamsyah is ranked 103rd in the world.

Earlier, the Vietnamese entrant Minh had romped past a Malaysian Syed Mustakim 2-0 in the round 64 on Wednesday.

Another Vietnamese man Nguyen Hoang Hai also made his way through to the last 16 round after beating Lu Chi Yuan (Taiwan) 2-1 on Thursday.

A total of 258 foreign badminton players, some of whom are in the world’s top 50, are taking part in competition at the tournament from May 22-27 to compete for prizes worth US$15,000.

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