Swiss Open: PV Sindhu one win away from gold medal

India's ace badminton player PV Sindhu on Friday stormed into the final of the BWF Swiss Open World Tour Super 300 as she beats Denmark's Mia Blichfeldt 22-20, 21-10 in the semifinal on Saturday.

The first game showcased a neck-to-neck fight with both players levelling it up 7-7 and it progressed in a similar fashion. An unsuccessful challenge in error by the Danish followed a couple of corner-side smashes of Sindhu gave the Indian an edge of 11-8 at the interval. Two successive points closed the gap for Blichfeldt at 11-10. Errors followed on as the Danish failed to return Sindhu's well-meted smashes at 16-11. Blichfeldt closed in and levelled after poor returns from Sindhu at 17-17. Sindhu recovered and earned 3 game points. Blichfeldt gained advantage of Sindhu's error of judgments and made it 20-20. Sindhu finally bagged the game with a smash at 22-21.

Sindhu maintained a lead in the second game to make it 7-3. She held on to a lead of 11-6 at the break. Sindhu went on playing flawless and piled up her lead to 15-8. Blichfeldt poor judgements and wrong serves kept on costing her points and Sindhu was swift in covering all corners of the court, which gave her an easy win of 21-10

The world no. 7 Indian reached the final of any tournament in 19 months since August 2019 when she won the BWF World Champion.

Sindhu will face the winner of the match between Carolina Marin and Pornpawee Chochuwong on Sunday in the finals.

The Swiss Open is the first tournament in the calendar year with which the Race to Tokyo restarts.