Star Indian shuttler PV Sindhu registered a straight game win over local contender Grigoria Mariska Tunjung in the first round of the Indonesia Open World Tour Super 1000 event here on Tuesday. Sindhu, a two-time Olympic medallist, who had made first round exits in the last two tournaments, stormed past her Indonesian opponent 21-19 21-15 in 38 minutes to enter the pre-quarterfinals.
This is Sindhu’s first win against Grigoria in the last three matches. She had lost against the Indonesian player in the Madrid Masters and Malaysia Masters earlier this year. Against Sindhu, who has slipped to 13th in the world rankings, Grigoria started well in the first game and took a 9-7 lead but the Indian took advantage of her length to collect good points and three consecutive unforced errors by Grigoria to break 11-10. 2000 and then managed to win the game.
Sindhu looked in better touch in the second game. Grigoria also made a lot of mistakes, taking advantage of which Sindhu was able to win the game and the match. This is Sindhu’s eighth win in 10 matches against Grigoria while she has lost twice. Sindhu won’t have an easy road ahead as she will take on third seed Tai Tzu Ying in the next round.
The Taiwanese player has won the last eight matches against Sindhu and her win-loss record against the Indian player is 18-5. An in-form HS Prannoy also stormed into the next round after beating Japan’s Kenta Nishimoto 21-16 21-14 in 50 minutes in straight games.
Seventh seed Indian Prannoy, who won the Malaysia Masters Super 300 title last month, will next face Hong Kong’s Ng Ka Long Angus. India’s women’s juggler pair of Trisha Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, however, bowed out after going down in the first round against Japan’s pair of Ring Iwanaga and Kei Nakanishi. India’s Commonwealth Games bronze medalist pair went down 22-20 12-21 16-21 in a hard-fought match that lasted one hour and 12 minutes.
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