Hong Kong, Sep 13: India’s Lakshya Sen entered his first major final in two years after edging out Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien Chen in straight games, while the men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty also stormed into the summit clash here on Saturday.
Lakshya, the 23-year-old from Almora and a 2021 World Championships bronze medallist, ended a long wait for a title shot with a fighting 23-21, 22-20 win over world No. 9 and third seed Chou in a gruelling 56-minute semifinal.
The Commonwealth Games champion had last won a Super 500 tournament at the Canada Open in July 2023. He also clinched a Super 300 title at the Syed Modi International in Lucknow in December last year.
Currently ranked world No. 20, Lakshya will face second seed Li Shi Feng of China in the final.
Satwik-Chirag on a run
Earlier, the world No. 9 duo of Satwik and Chirag defeated Chinese Taipei’s Bing-Wei Lin and Chen Cheng-Kuan 21-17, 21-15 to make their first final of the season after six semifinal heartbreaks.
The eighth-seeded Indians will take on China’s Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang, silver medallists at the Paris Olympics.
“Finals, finally. It’s been seven semifinals since China Open last year. We’ve been constantly playing semifinals and I think we really wanted to play a final. It’s been a while,” Chirag said.
“The last final we played was the Thailand Open, probably in May, before the Olympics. We really wanted to do well here and I think we’re really happy. Still one more match to go, but overall it’s been a good final.
“World Championships was good, although we would have loved to play the final, but I think the pairs that we beat with the confidence that we had coming into the World Championships, it was quite good. But having said that, yeah, really happy that we are playing a final here, finally broke that semifinal jinx,” Chirag further added. (PTI)
