Top Indian shuttlers P V Sindhu and Parupalli Kashyap suffered heartbreaking defeats in the semifinals, while Saina Nehwal was knocked out at the last-eight stage as India's campaign in the USD 125,000 Swiss Grand Prix Gold tournament came to an end, here today.
World championship bronze medallist, Sindhu, who had stunned recently-crowned All England Champion Shixian Wang in the quarterfinals, could not tame the fast emerging Chinese shuttler Sun Yu in the semifinals.
The 18-year-old Indian squandered a first game advantage to go down 21-18 12-21 19-21 to Sun in a 79-minute women's singles match. This is Sindhu's third loss to Sun as she had last lost to the Chinese in the All England recently.
Kashyap, seeded third, too slumped to a 17-21 11-21 loss to world number 27 China's Houwei Tian in a 42-minute men's singles match. Kashyap had booked the semifinal berth with a hard-fought 21-15 21-23 21-18 win over sixth seed Tien Chen Chou of Chinese Taipei last night.
However, Olympic bronze medallist Saina had a tough time dealing with the world number three Yihan Wang as she slipped to a 17-21 12-21, her seventh defeat to the Chinese, in a 38-minute match.
In the semifinal match, Sindhu was leading 8-4 early on but she allowed Sun to open up a slender 12-10 lead midway. However, a five-point burst helped the Indian to surge ahead and go one-up.
Sun, however, regrouped herself quickly and didn't allow Sindhu to apply her tactics and lead right from the start to slowly and steadily take the game away from the Indian and comeback into the contest.
In the decider, Sun continued her domination and led 11-6 at the interval. Sindhu grabbed three points on the trot to narrow the gap but the Chinese maintained her distance and reached 19-14.
Sindhu gave a gallant fight and repaired the deficit to move to 19-20 but Sun had the last laugh in the end.
