Saina Nehwal and HS Prannoy were knocked out of the $750,000 Denmark Open badminton tournament after losing their respective quarterfinals in straight games at Odense on Friday.
Prannoy lost his men’s singles last-eight match 13-21, 18-21 to top seed Son Wan-ho in 44 minutes. This was the South Korean’s third win over Prannoy in four meetings and first since 2014.
Earlier, unseeded Saina, who is ranked 12th in the world, went down 10-21, 13-21 in less than half an hour to Japanese fourth seed Akane Yamaguchi in the Superseries Premier tournament.
This was Saina’s second loss in three meetings against the Japanese World No.5. Akane will next take on Chinese World No.10 Chen Yufei, against whom the Japanese has a 3-1 record.
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The Hyderabadi, playing her second tournament since her bronze medal winning performance at the World Badminton Championships in Glasgow, had taken off well at the Odense Sports Park after beating Olympic champion Carolina Marin of Spain in her opening round.
But on Friday, the former World No.1 Indian looked out of touch as she consistently made unforced errors throughout the match.
Saina, who had won the Denmark Open way back in 2012, matched Akane early in the match but the Japanese displayed tremendous skill and agility to quickly race away to an 8-3 lead. The fourth seed kept extending her lead and closed out the game in her favour on her first game point.
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The Olympic bronze medallist from India fought back in the second game, matching Akane’s strokes till 10-all.
But then from 13-12, she suddenly found legs to win the next seven points to reach match point at 20-12. Saina saved one but it was a little too late as Akane clinched the next point to enter the semis.
Akane totally dominated the match, winning 42 of the 65 points played.
HS Prannoy and Kidambi Srikanth will play their men’s singles quarterfinals later.
Source: HindustanTimes