Dubai Superseries Finals | Sindhu goes down fighting in semifinal

PV Sindhu had a 6-3 head-to-head record going into the match against World No. 5 Sung Ji Hyun with her last win coming just last month en route to her maiden Superseries title at the China Open. More importantly, Sindhu came into the semifinal after having won a major psychological battle on Friday with a win against Olympic champion Carolina Marin.

First Game

Sindhu’s errors, however, came back to trouble her with Sung taking a 5-7 lead and extending it with some nifty play at the net. Sindhu made amends for that with some sustained attacking play that saw her close the gap to 9-10, but a long return saw Sung go into the break with the lead at 9-11.

At 11-13, Sindhu made a great lunging return to keep the shuttle in play, but made a wrong call near the net to gift away the point. Although Sindhu managed to make some great saves, Sung raced to a 14-19 lead, breaking down the Indian’s defence time and again. The Korean eventually closed the opening game at 15-21 with a net-smash.

The second game began with a great rally that stretched into 30 shots with both players missing chances to finish, but it was Sindhu who eventually gave up dumping her return into the net. Sindhu caught up with the Korean at 2-2, and once again at 4-4 by taking her time to place a superb smash-drop leaving Sung stranded in the middle.

Sindhu took the lead going up 7-6 with another well-placed smash to her opponent’s left. Sindhu’s shifted her game to the backcourt after apparently receiving instructions from coach Gopichand and stifled the Korean’s netplay with her lobs. But Sung turned the game around by erasing Sindhu’s three-point advantage to draw par at 9-9.

Third Game

Sung took an early 1-4 lead in the decider and extended it to 3-8 thanks to Sindhu’s stream of errors. After committing initial faults, Sindhu did everything right by sending well-placed smashes only to see Sung somehow send back all of them to go up 5-9.