Olympic silver-medalist PV Sindhu bowed out of the Denmark Open Superseries after losing to Japan's Sayaka Sato in a hard-fought second-round match 13-21, 23-21, 18-21 on Thursday.
Sindhu had won her first-round match against China's He Bingjiao 21-14, 21-15 on Wednesday. Sindhu finished runners-up in the tournament last year. After comfortably going down in the first game, Sindhu launched a spirited comeback to win the second, which ran close till the end.
Neither competitor gave up. With the scores at 17-all in the third game, a series of body-smashes handed the game, which lasted for more than an hour, to the 25-year-old Japanese.