Badminton
Canada Open 2024: Rajawat and Treesa-Gayatri advance
Priyanshu Rajawat will now face the World No. 4 and the top-seeded Anders Antonsen in the quarterfinals.
Priyanshu Rajawat's impressive run at the Pan-Am leg of the BWF World Tour 2024 continued as he reached to his second consecutive quarterfinals on the tour.
The Indian women's doubles pairing of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand also moved on to the quarterfinals of Canada Open on Thursday.
Rajawat registered a clinical straight-set win (21-19, 21-11) over the higher ranked Takuma Obayashi of Japan in the second-round clash.
Earlier, he had pulled off an upset by beating the eight-seeded Rasmus Gemke of Denmark in the first round. He will now be aiming to better his performance from last week with a deeper run in the Canada Open.
However, he has his work cut out in the quarterfinals against the World No.4 and the top-seeded Anders Antonsen of Denmark. Antonsen will be highly motivated as he is fighting to be ranked in the top-three seed at the Paris Olympics.
Gritty win for Treesa-Gayatri
The young pairing of Treesa and Gayatri had another three-game win (17-21, 21-7, 21-8) against a very low-ranked mixed pairing of Denmark's Natasja Anthonisen and Netherlands's Alyssa Tirtosentono in the second round.
They are still finding it tough to close out the comparatively easier matches in straight-games. However, they showed the expected domination in the final two games and now will try to improve this in the coming rounds.
They have a pretty good draw ahead and will be the favorites to reach the final from the bottom half. Their next match will be up against a tricky Chinese Taipei pairing of Hung En-Tzu and Hsieh Pie Shan.
Narrow defeats
The Indian pairing of Krishna Prasad and Sai Pratheek suffered a very close three-game (19-21, 21-18, 17-21) defeat to the Chinese Taipei pairing of Lin Bing Wei and Su Ching Heng in the men's doubles second round clash.
The young Indian shuttler, Anupama Upadhyaya also had a very good match against the highly experienced Canadian player Mitchell Li. But eventually, she came out as the second best after a three-game (14-21, 21-17, 13-21) encounter.
In mixed doubles, the pairing of Rohan Kapoor and Ruthvika Shivani Gadde also suffered a three-game defeat while Tanya Hemanth went down in straight games against third-seeded Busanan Ongbamrungphan.