Lee Chong Wei was forced to pull out of French Open badminton 2016 due to a hamstring injury on Wednesday.
The world number one shuttler was scheduled to take on Taiwan's Hsu Jen Hao in the opening round of the Superseries tournament in Paris.
However, the top seed had to bring an end to his title defence this year as he failed to recover in time for his first round match. The ongoing tournament is the shuttler's third Superseries appearance after his silver medal-winning campaign at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
After winning the Japan Open in September, which was also his first tournament after his Olympic stint, Chong Wei was stunned in the quarter-final of the Denmark Open Superseries earlier this month. He also picked up the injury during his 2-1 loss against unseeded French shuttler Brice Leverdez.
Malaysia's national singles coach Hendrawan revealed that they had to wait till the morning of the game to assess his injury.
He added that Chong Wei was not able to fully recover and thus they went against fielding him keeping in mind the upcoming tournaments in the season, including the World Superseries final in Dubai, before which he will feature in the China Open and Hong Kong Open in November.
"We had already discussed about this on Tuesday but decided to wait and see how Chong Wei was coping today. He was already having difficulties moving due to the injury and so we decided to pull him out," Hendrawan was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times Online.
"There is no point in pushing him to play as that could make things worst. He still has three more tournaments to go, it's best he focuses on them."
Notably, Olympic Women's singles gold medallist Carolina Marin also pulled out of the ongoing tournament due to injury. While Denmark Open saw top seeds failing to make an impact, the French Open has lost its sheen with the absence of top stars including China's top-ranked players Chen Long and Lin Dan.
