Indian badminton player PV Sindhu suffered an early exit from the Japan Open 2023 badminton tournament at the Yoyogi National Gymnasium in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Sindhu, 17th in the women’s singles badminton rankings, lost to the Republic of China’s Zhang Yi Man 21-12, 21-13 to make her seventh opening round exit in 13 BWF World Tour 2023 tournaments this year.
This was also PV Sindhu’s second straight opening round ouster after going down to Chinese Taipei’s Pai Yu Po in the Korea Open opener last week.
Zhang Yi Man, ranked one place lower than Sindhu, looked in control throughout the contest and wrapped up the match in 32 minutes to pick up her third victory over the Indian shuttler in five meetings.
Commonwealth Games 2022 men’s singles champion Lakshya Sen also had to endure a three-game affair against compatriot Priyanshu Rajawat before clinching the thriller by a 21-15, 12-21, 24-22 scoreline.
Lakshya Sen’s pre-quarterfinal opponent will be Japan’s Kanta Tsuneyama, who upset Indonesian world No. 2 Anthony Sinisuka Ginting in the opening round.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, fresh off their Korea Open triumph last week, had to dig deep to make the second round in Japan.
The Indian men’s doubles aces, who rose to a career-best world No. 2 recently, were stretched to three games by Indonesia’s Leo Rolly Carnando and Daniel Marthin but eventually won the match 21-16, 11-21, 21-13.
Results at the Japan Open will count towards players’ qualifying rankings for the Paris 2024 Olympics. The qualification window for badminton started on May 1 this year.
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