Saina faces Tai in final, Srikanth shown the door
DENMARK OPEN World No 10 defeats Tunjung to enter first summit clash since CWG 2018
ODENSE (DENMARK): Top Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal stormed into the women’s singles final of Denmark Open with an easy win over Gregoria Tunjung of Indonesia but Kidambi Srikanth suffered a straight games defeat in the men’s singles semi-finals to bow out of the tournament here on Saturday.
Olympic bronze medallist Saina beat Tunjung 21-11, 21-12 in a one-sided semi-final that lasted just 30 minutes.
Saina will face world No 1 Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei on Sunday.
Tai has an overwhelming 12-5 career head-to-head record against Saina, who last defeated Tai in 2013.Since then the Chinese Taipei shuttler has been victorious in the last 10 matches between the two.
This year, world No 10 Saina has lost all her four matches against Tai, the last being the Asian Games semi-final in Jakarta in August.
In the semi-final against Tunjung, it was, however, a cakewalk for Saina as she completely dominated from start to finish in both games.
With Parupalli Kashyap, with whom she is getting married later this year, cheering in her corner, Saina reeled off easy points one after the other with her Indonesian rival not giving much resistance.
Saina was 10-4 ahead in no time and extended the lead to 17-8 before pocketing the first game in just 13 minutes.
Tunjung gave a semblance of a fight in the second game which lasted a bit longer than the first. Saina took a 7-3 lead but Tunjung fought back to level scores at 7-7 but there was no looking back for the Indian from thereon as she surged ahead with a series of points before pocketing the second game to win the match.
SRIKANTH OFF-COLOUR
In the men’s singles semi-finals, Srikanth was completely offcolour, especially in the second game as he went down tamely to world No 1 Kento Momota of Japan in 42 minutes.
However, there was not much to separate between the two initially as they were locked 10-10. But from thereon, Momota surged ahead by reeling off four straight points.
World No 6 Srikanth narrowed down the gap to 13-15 but the Japanese continued his momentum to make it 20-13 to have seven game points. The Indian saved three but it was just a matter of one shot for Momota to go 1-0 up in the match.
The second game was even worse for Srikanth as he trailed all along from 4-4.
There was a brief period of a fightback from Srikanth when he made the score 9-11 but from thereon the Japanese was unstoppable as he won the second game quickly to pocket the match.