Next week's Malaysian Open has been hit with a series of  withdrawals. Tomas Berdych and defending champion Mikhail Youzhny announced their pull outs, joining Robin Soderling on the sidelines. "It is true that the withdrawals have taken some luster off our tournament this year. We were lucky there were no withdrawals the last two years,” Malaysian Open tournament director Nick Freyer told The Star. No. 12 Nicolas Almagro and No. 16 Viktor Troicki are the top seeds.