Indian women’s doubles pair Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand began their campaign at the 2024 Hong Kong Open Super 500 with a win in the Round of 32 on Tuesday.
The world No 26 pair beat Ukraine’s Polina Buhrova and Yevheniia Kantemyr 21-14, 21-13 to move into the Round of 16.
However, Treesa-Gayatri will be up against a tough challenge in the second round as they come up against Paris Olympic silver medallists Liu Shengshu and Tan Ning from China.
The other Indian pair in the women’s doubles event, Rutuparna and Swetaparna Panda exited in the opening round with a 11-21, 8-21 loss to Hsieh Pei-Shan and Hung En-Tzu of Chinese Taipei.
There will also be no Indians coming through the qualifiers with Chirag Sen, Manav Choudhary and the men’s doubles pair of Vaibhaav and Ashith Surya all losing.
Sen and Choudhary had won their opening qualification matches earlier in the day, but faltered at the quarter-final stage of the qualifiers. Sen lost 12-21, 21-13, 14-21 to Canada’s Xiaodong Sheng while Choudhary exited in the qualfiers stage with a 6-21, 10-21 to local favourite Chan Yin Chak.
Vaibhaav and Ashith also exited in the qualifying quarter-final stage with a 15-21, 9-21 to Hong Kong’s Lui Chun Wai and Kuei Chun Hung.
There will be more Indians in action on Wednesday with Priyanshu Rajawat and Kiran George in men’s singles, and Aakarshi Kashyap along with Tanya Hemanth in women’s singles.
B Sumeeth Reddy-N Sikki Reddy, Kona Tarun-Sri Krishna Priya Kudaravalli and Ashith Surya-Amrutha Pramuthesh will be the three Indian pairs competing in mixed doubles while no men’s doubles pairs from the country will be in action in Hong Kong.
