Sindhu sails, Saina stretched in Round 1 of Hong Kong Open
MIXED DAY Ace women shuttlers progress; disappointment in men’s section as only Prannoy survives NEW DELHI:
Saina Nehwal, PV Sindhu and HS Prannoy won their respective openers to advance to the second round at the $400,000 Hong Kong Open Superseries badminton tournament on Wednesday.
However, it was the end of the road for Parupalli Kashyap, B Sai Praneeth and Sourabh Verma, who lost their men’s singles first round matches at the Hong Kong Coliseum.
Rio Olympics silver medallist and second seed PV Sindhu hardly broke a sweat as she marched past local girl Leung Yuet Yee 21-18, 21-10 in only 26 minutes. This was World No.2 Sindhu’s first match against the Hong Kong girl.
The three-time World Championships medallist will next face the winner of the match between Japan’s Aya Ohori and Russian Evgeniya Kosetskaya.
Sindhu is gunning for her third Superseries title of 2017 after winning in India and South Korea.
A short while earlier, Saina also eased into the second round of women’s singles with a straight games victory over Denmark’s Mette Poulsen. The World No.11 won 21-19, 23-21 in 46 minutes in her first clash against the Dane. Saina, who won the National Badminton Championships earlier this month, will next face Chinese eighth seed Chen Yufei in the second round.
The World No.9 has been in brilliant form this year and also clinched the bronze at the Glasgow World Championships in August and will be facing Saina for the first time.
Prannoy also made it to through to the second round of men’s singles but not before he was given a tough fight by veteran Hu Yun, who had a lot of local support cheering him on.
But the new Indian national champion stuck his neck out and won the contest 19-21, 21-17, 21-15 in an hour and one minute.
After beating Hu Yun in their first ever encounter, the World No.10 Prannoy will take on qualifier Kazumasa Sakai. But significantly, the Japanese has a 2-0 lead over the Kerala shuttler.
Kashyap and Verma fought hard in their openers but their campaign came to a crashing end.
South Korean Lee Dong Keun beat reigning Commonwealth Games champion Kashyap 15-21,
21-9, 22-20. A little while later, Indonesian veteran Tommy Sugiarto beat Verma 21-15, 21-8 in half an hour.