SportsBadminton
Sindhu and Lakshya fall in Denmark Open first round, Srikanth and Tanvi go through
PV Sindhu let a one-game lead slip against Germany's Yvonne Li in Odense, while third seed Chou Tien Chen beat Lakshya Sen in three games.
Key points
- PV Sindhu lost 21-13, 23-25, 19-21 to Germany's Yvonne Li in the first round.
- Lakshya Sen went down to third seed Chou Tien Chen in three games.
- Kidambi Srikanth, the 2017 champion, set up a meeting with seventh seed Alex Lanier.
PV Sindhu and Lakshya Sen are out of the Denmark Open after first-round defeats at the SJF Bank Arena in Odense on Tuesday.
Sindhu, ranked 10th in the world, won the opening game 21-13 against Germany’s Yvonne Li, ranked 50th, and looked on course for a routine win. Li took a tense second game 25-23 and then edged the decider 21-19 after an hour and five minutes. It was Sindhu’s first defeat in four matches against the German.
The loss cuts short what had been a good few months for the two-time Olympic medallist. She won the Japan Open, a Super 750 event like this one, in July, and reached the quarter-finals of the Arctic Open before losing to Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand in three games.
Lakshya also took his match the distance. He lost the first game 18-21 to Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei, the third seed, levelled with a 21-13 second game, but fell away 15-21 in the decider after 63 minutes.
Two Indians still standing
Kidambi Srikanth, who won this title in 2017, beat France’s Arnaud Merkle 22-20, 21-19 in 46 minutes. He now faces another Frenchman, seventh seed Alex Lanier, in the pre-quarter-finals.
Tanvi Sharma needed an hour and 12 minutes to beat Japan’s Natsuki Nidaira 21-17, 16-21, 21-19. Her reward is a second-round meeting with Yvonne Li, the player who knocked Sindhu out.