Paris: Olympic medallist Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal’s impressive run at the French Open ended with yet another loss to world no 1 Tai Tzu Ying, this time at the quarterfinals of the BWF World Tour Super 750 tournament on Friday.
Saina looked in good touch initially but couldn’t match the pace of Tzu Ying later on to squander four game points and lose the opening game.
She was no match to her rival in the second and eventually went down 20-22 11-21 in the quarterfinals.
It was Saina’s 12th straight defeat to the Chinese Taipei shuttler, who showed incredible temperament and determination to seal the contest after being 9-16 and 16-20 down in the opening game.
Saina yet again failed to crack the Tzu Ying code as she lost to the Chinese Taipei shuttler in the finals last week at Denmark Open.
Tzu Ying now has an overwhelming 14-5 head-to-head record against Saina.
Earlier, Indian ace P V Sindhu advanced to the quarterfinals with a straight-game win over Japan’s Sayaka Sato but B Sai Praneeth crashed out in men’s singles on Thursday night.
Sindhu, seeded third, dished out a compact game to outwit Sayaka 21-17 21-16 in a second round match on Thursday to set up a clash with seventh seeded Chinese He Bingjiao.
However, Praneeth was no match for Asian Games champion Jonatan Christie of Indonesia, going down 16-21 14-21 in a men’s singles match.
The men’s doubles pairs of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty and Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy too put up a good show, progressing to the quarterfinals with straight game wins.
While Satwik and Chirag defeated China’s He Jiting and Tan Qiang 21-13 21-19, Manu and Sumeeth stunned third seeded Chinese combination of Liu Cheng and Zhang Nan 21-14 21-16 in another match.
However, it was curtains for Meghana Jakkampudi and Poorvisha S Ram as the duo went down 15-21 13-21 to fourth seeded Indonesian pair of Greysia Polii and Apriyani Rahayu. (PTI)
