Kallang (Singapore): India’s HS Prannoy and ace shuttler P V Sindhu advanced to the quarterfinals of the Singapore Open Super 500 tournament after coming from behind in their respective round-of-16 matches on Thursday.
In the men’s singles, Thomas Cup hero Prannoy, who is ranked 19 in the world, stunned world No. 4 Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei 14-21, 22-20, 21-18 to make it to the last eight.
After losing the opening game, Prannoy bounced back in the second and forced the decider to keep his quarterfinal chances alive.
In the decider, trailing 6-11 at the break, Prannoy earned eight of the next 11 points to level the score at 14-all. The Indian shuttler then shifted the gears and sailed into his fourth successive quarterfinals.
On the other hand, Sindhu defeated Vietnam’s Thuy Linh Nguyen 19-21, 21-19, and 21-18.
Sindhu looked caught off-guard against her lower-ranked opponent in the first game. In the second game, she was trailing 17-19 at one point. Then she rallied to score four straight points to take the match into a decider.
Sindhu turned the face of the match in the final game as she raced to a 9-3 lead. Nguyen, however, closed the gap to 11-10 heading into the break.
After the change of sides, both the shuttlers were engaged in a close contest for the remainder of the match, but it was the Sindhu, who wrapped up the win to progress to the quarterfinals of the Super 500 tournament.
In another match, Mithun Manjunath, who defeated world championships silver medallist Kidambi Srikanth in round 1, went down to Ireland’s Nhat Nguyen 10-21, 21-18, 16-21.
