India’s campaign at the $ 775,000 Denmark Open came to a disappointing end with the trioka of PV Sindhu, B Sai Praneeth and Sameer Verma — all-exiting after suffering straight-game losses, here on Thursday.
World Champion Sindhu, seeded fifth, yet again struggled to buck the trend of recent early exits as she was knocked out after she lost 14-21, 17-21 to Korea,s An Se Young in a 40-minute second-round women,s singles clash at the BWF World Tour Super 750 event.
It turned out to be a dismal day for Indian shuttlers in general as B Sai Praneeth, Sameer Verma, and men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty also went down in straight games in their second rounds.
While Praneeth was outclassed by two-time World Champion Kento Momota of Japan 6-21, 14-21 in yet another dominating show, Sameer lost 12-21, 10-21 to Olympic champion Chen Long of China.
Thailand Open champions Satwik and Chirag also suffered a 16-21, 15-21 defeat against sixth seed Chinese combination of Han Cheng Kai and Zhou Hao Dong in men's doubles.
Later in the day, Pranaav Chopra and N Sikki Reddy put up a gallant fight before going down 24-26, 21-13, 11-21 to fourth seeded Malaysian pair of Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying in the mixed doubles competition.