Sankar Muthusamy and Lakshya Sen set up an all-Indian quarter-final clash after winning their respective men’s singles second-round matches at the US Open Super 300 on Thursday.
While Lakshya Sen is in great form, having won the Canada Open Super 500 last week, Muthusamy claimed the biggest win of his fledgling career after beating world No 32 Nhat Nguyen in the first round of the US Open Super 300 event.
In the second round, Sen registered a straight-games victory (21-8, 23-21) against Czech Republic’s Jan Louda. Meanwhile, Muthusamy defeated Israel’s Misha Zilberman 21-18, 21-23, 21-13 in a match that lasted one hour and fourteen minutes.
Third-seeded PV Sindhu also registered a comfortable straight-games win (21-14, 21-12) against Taiwan’s Sung Shuo Yun in the women’s singles encounter that lasted 37 minutes. The Indian will face China’s Gao Fang Jie in the quarter-final on Friday. The two had also met in the Canada Open Super 300 quarter-final last week where Sindhu came up with a comprehensive 21-13, 21-7 win.
Before their meeting in Calgary, Sindhu had never beaten Gao in the previous three occasions they had met before. She will be expecting to continue her upward climb in the head to head tally between the two.