Saina Nehwal bows out of Macau Open

TIL Desk Sports/ Top seed Saina Nehwal crashed out of the Macau Open Grand Prix Gold badminton tournament after suffering a straight-game loss against lower-ranked Zhang Yiman of China in the women’s singles quarterfinal clash here today.

Former World No.1 Saina, who is slowly trying to come back to her best after recovering from a major knee injury which affected her Olympic campaign, found the going tough today, going down 17-21 17-21 to Zhang in a 35-minute clash.

Saina, who improved a place yesterday in the world rankings to be at number 10, seemed to have been affected by the gruelling three-game matches that she played in the last two rounds here. 19-year-old Zhang, who is ranked at World No. 226, took the early 4-2 lead and then held a slender 9-8 at one stage.

Saina erased the deficit after the interval with two points but the Chinese managed to grab a 14-12 advantage and then jumped to 19-12 lead. The Indian picked up four points to narrow the gap but Zhang soon surged to seal the game and the match in her favour.