Saina Nehwal lost her third straight match against former world champion Nozomi Okuhara, this time in the quarter-finals of the Korea Open on Friday.
The 28-year-old Indian had a great chance to avenge her defeats to the Japanese at the 2017 world championships and the 2018 Asian Games, but she squandered four match points to lose the match 21-15, 15-21, 20-22 in 59 minutes.
The first game saw both shuttlers commit one too many errors in the opening exchanges, even as they kept up with each other till the first interval. After the break, Nehwal went on the attack and played some good drop shots and half smashes to open up a sizeable lead for herself. She won the game comfortably in just 15 minutes.
Okuhara looked a lot more clinical in the second game and took a two-point lead into the interval. In what was almost a mirror image of the first game, it was Okuhara who then raced into a lead and won the game, taking the match into a decider.
By then it was clear that there was a side of the court that both players favoured. The drift appeared to be sideways but benefitting the shuttler playing from the right of the umpire. Nehwal knew she had to build a healthy lead in the first half of the decider before they switched ends. She managed to lead only by two points at the interval but then the drift seemed to go away for a while in the second half, allowing the Indian to take a 16-10 lead.
Okuhara tried her best to recover from there but wasn’t able to keep a tab on her errors. It looked like Nehwal had the match in the bag when she got herself four match points. But in yet another bizarre twist, Okuhara managed to save all four of them – the last one thanks to a horrible shot that went wide from Nehwal. The drift, it appeared, was back.
An error at the net from Nehwal gave Okuhara her fifth straight point and match point. The Japanese managed to convert it and complete a remarkable fightback. She will face her compatriot Nozomi Okuhara in the semi-finals on Saturday.
