Hong Kong Open: PV Sindhu goes down fighting in final against World No.1 Tai Tzu Ying

PV Sindhu’s gallant fight ended in agony as she suffered a second successive loss to world no. 1 Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei at the summit clash of the $400,000 Hong Kong Super Series in Kowloon on Sunday.

Playing her fifth straight tournament, Sindhu, who had a 3-7 head-to-head record against Tai before the match, never lacked in fitness and fought throughout the match before going down 18-21 18-21 to the defending champion in a 44-minute women’s singles final here.

This is Sindhu’s second loss in the four finals that she reached this season. She had lost to Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara at the World Championship final, while clinched two titles at India and Korea this year.

In the opening game which lasted 21 minutes, Tai moved to a 3-0 lead early on before Sindhu made a good judgement at the baseline to log the first points. However, Tai unleashed her wide repertoire of strokes and varied the pace well to lead 7 -2.

Sindhu then started to dominate the rallies by using her deep clears and drew the Taiwanese close to the net. She used her reach to catch the shuttle early and placed it in difficult positions to narrow the deficit to …read more