In one of the most one-sided defeats of her career, world No 2 PV Sindhu was stunned by Gao Fangjie, a qualifier ranked 87 places below her, in straight games in the quarter-finals of the China Open Superseries Premier on Friday.
Defending champion Sindhu looked exhausted towards the end of the match that lasted 37 minutes, with Gao winning 21-11, 21-9.
The first game started with the two players trading points, with the score tied at 4-4 at one stage. But Gao slowly but surely started pulling away to take a 11-8 lead during the mid-game interval. It was more of the same when play resumed, with Gao wrapping up the game 21-11, winning 10 of the last 13 points.
If Sindhu had hopes of fighting back in the second round, Gao quickly snuffed it out, running into an early 7-1 lead. The 19-year-old Chinese used her deception to great effect to make Sindhu run around the court and the errors from the Indian shuttler didn’t help her cause either. With Sindhu visibly looking exhausted towards the end, Gao did not drop her level for a bit, taking the second game 21-9.
This was the first meeting at the international level between the two shuttlers. With this defeat, India’s campaign at the premier Superseries event came to an end.
