PV Sindhu lost to Chen Yufei of China in the opening round.
PV Sindhu suffered a shock straight game defeat against Chen Yufei of China in the opening round to crash out of the Denmark Open. Olympic and World Championship silver medallist shuttler Sindhu failed to break the rhythm of world number 10 Chen to go down fighting 17-21 21-23 in a 43-minute women's singles match.
This is her second successive early exit from a top tournament. After clinching the Korea Open, she had lost in the second round of Japan Open last month.
Sindhu conceded a 0-3 lead to Chen early on but managed to erase the deficit when she drew parity at 9-9 and moved together till 17-17. It was at this moment when Chen stepped up and grabbed four crucial points to win the first game.
In the second game, Chen surged to a 7-3 lead but Sindhu clawed her way back with four straight points. But at the break, it was the Chinese who had a slender one-point lead. After the interval, Chen extended the lead to 15-11.
Sindhu managed to reduce it to 16-17. However, Sindhu struggled to retrieve some low shots and and when one of her net dribbles going awry, Chen had four match points.
Sindhu then saved four match points to make it 20-20 but eventually Chen closed out the match at 23-21 to avenge her World Championship loss to the Indian.
Meanwhile, the other top Indian woman shuttler Saina Nehwal knocked out Olympic champion Carolina Marin of Spain with a 22-20 21-18 win in a hard-fought first round battle, thereby avenging her Japan Open second round loss to the Spaniard.
World number 12 Saina dished out a controlled game, mixed with aggression and caution to outwit the Spaniard who is ranked eight places above the Indian.
"I was moving well and finally it is about movements and picking up shots. She is the best player in the world and she is playing extremely well but I was happy with the way I was retrieving my shots," said Saina after notching up her fifth win over Marin in nine meetings.
"I don't know how I played today, everything happened so fast. The court is little fast, it was not a rally kind of court. The smashes were going well but anything could have happened but I picked up those difficult shots," she added.
Saina will play either Thailand's Nitchaon Jindapol or Russia's Evgeniya Kosetskaya in the next round.
In the men's singles, Kidambi Srikanth and H S Prannoy made positive starts but B Sai Praneeth bowed out in the opening round after losing 10-21 15-21 to local hope Hans- Kristian Solberg Vittinghus in a lop-sided contest.
Among other Indians in fray, young doubles specialist Satwiksairaj Rankireddy suffered twin defeats in mixed and men's doubles competition to end his campaign.
Satwik and his mixed doubles partner Ashwini Ponnappa, who had reached the semifinals last week at Dutch Open, lost 19-21 17-21 to local combo of Niclas Nohr and Sara Thygesen. In men's doubles, Satwik and Chirag Shetty, who had reached the quarters at Korea Open, failed to get across Korean pair of Chung Eui Seok and Kim Dukyoung, losing 21-14 18-21 17-21 in the opening round.
Experienced men's doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy also lost 13-21 18-21 to Denmark's Mads Conrad- Petersen and Mads Pieler Kolding, while it was curtains for Ashwini and Sikki in women's doubles after they went down fighting 21-15 18-21 21-23 to Malaysian combo of Chow Mei Kuan and Lee Meng Yean.
Another mixed doubles pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N Sikki Reddy, who had reached the semifinals at Japan Open, also crashed out in the opening round after losing 17-21 15-21 to Irish combo of Sam Magee and Chloe Magee.
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