French Open 2023: PV Sindhu, Satwik/Chirag move to pre-quarterfinals

Indian shuttlers had a good day in the opening round of the French Open Super 750 tournament as PV Sindhu in women's singles and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty in men's doubles moved to the second round of the tournament at Glaz Arena, Rennes, on Tuesday.

Newly-crowned world number one pair of Satwik/Chirag had an easy match on the card as they stormed past the French pair of Lucas Corvee and Ronan Labar in the straight games 21-13, 21-13.

The Indian pair took merely 35 minutes to get past Lucas and Ronan, who lagged right from the start as Satwik and Chirag dominated the proceedings, leading 11-6 at the interval and kept moving ahead to close the opening game.

The second game followed a similar script as Satwik and Chirag jumped to an 11-6 advantage again and kept their stranglehold to seal the issue.

In women's singles, two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu defeated Gregoria Mariska Tunjung for the second time in as many weeks after getting better of the Indonesian shuttler at the Denmark Open last week.

Up against the world number seven, PV Sindhu lost the first game 12-21 as Tunjung capitalised on the net errors and tentativeness of Sindhu.

Sindhu came back strongly in the second game and took a lead of 11-7 at the mid-game break. After the break, Sindhu erred on the sidelines and Tunjung capitalised on it to make a brief comeback.

Tunjung was leading 18-16 at one point, but Sindhu took five consecutive points to win 21-18 and force the decider.

In the deciding game, Sindhu looked in control after a few early exchanges and gave no room to Tunjung to win the game and match.

Lakshya Sen and Kidambi Srikanth will be playing their first-round matches on Wednesday. Lakshya will play Arnaud Merkle of France and Srikanth will face Toma Popov Junior of France in their respective matches.