In the first round of the men’s singles competition at the Japan Open Super 750 in Tokyo on Tuesday, former world No. 1 Kidambi Srikanth defeated Chou Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei with ease, winning 21-13, 21-13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was their eighth encounter, with the Indian trailing 1-6 in their previous meetings. Prior to Tuesday, Srikanth had only achieved one victory, triumphing in their initial match in the Hong Kong Open in 2014 by scores of 18-21, 22-20, and 21-16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in Tokyo, Srikanth never trailed the eighth-ranked player at any point during the contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 30-year-old from Guntur jumped up to a quick 5-0 lead in the game. Despite Chou’s ability to make it 10-8, the Indian didn’t make a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Srikanth scored the final four points in the first game to win it at 17-13. In the second game, he capitalised on that momentum to jump out to an early 5-1 lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chou did succeed in cutting the lead to 6-4, but Srikanth once more lost initiative and began to dictate rallies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At 16-13, Srikanth finally scored the next five points in a row to win the game and the match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Akane Yamaguchi, the top seed, defeated Aakarshi Kashyap earlier in the day on Court 1 and won 17-21, 17-21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chinese Taipei’s Ye Hong Wei and Lee Chia Hsin defeated Rohan Kapoor and Sikki Reddy in the mixed doubles match, winning 21-18, 9-21, and 18-21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
HS Prannoy will compete against Chinese All England Open champion Li Shi Feng later today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, in the opening match at the Japan Open, Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand will take on Sayaka Hobara and Yui Suizu, two unseeded Japanese competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 59th-ranked Japanese duo will be up against the World No. 19 Indians for the first time in their career. The game’s favourites will be the Indians<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Srikanth scored the final four points in the first game to win it at 17-13. In the second game, he capitalised on that momentum to jump out to an early 5-1 lead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":482142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6],"tags":[1303,159699,159684,27998,1138],"yst_prominent_words":[46274,7412,13088,24330,46284,3887,4556,23486,24328,9115,39676,72370,27993,9432,3970,13086,20829],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/07\/25134759\/ezgif-5-059a88c2fa-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482138"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=482138"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=482138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}