Lakshya Sen and Tharun Mannepalli Shine at Macau Open Semifinals

Indian Players Excel in Macau Open

Macau [China], August 1: Lakshya Sen, the Commonwealth Games champion, along with Tharun Mannepalli, has advanced to the semifinals of the ongoing Macau Open. However, the well-known men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty has been eliminated from the tournament.

Tharun continued his impressive performance at the BWF Super 300 event, defeating Hu Zhe'an, the reigning junior world champion from China, in the quarterfinals held at the Macao East Asian Games Dome, according to a statement from Olympics.com.

After securing an easy victory in the first game, Tharun faced a setback in the second but rallied to win the match with scores of 21-12, 13-21, 21-18, overcoming a late challenge from Hu Zhe'an.

The 23-year-old had previously achieved a surprising victory against top seed Lee Cheuk Yiu from Hong Kong in the earlier round.

In the semifinals, Tharun will compete against Malaysia's Justin Hoh, whom he defeated at the Thailand Open earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Lakshya Sen, currently ranked 17th in the world and a semifinalist for the Paris Olympics 2024, faced China's Xuan Chen Zhu, ranked 77th, in the quarterfinals. He won the match with scores of 21-14, 18-21, 21-14, taking just over an hour despite losing the second game.

This marks Lakshya's best performance in the BWF World Tour for 2025, and he will face Indonesia's Alwi Farhan in the semifinals.

On the other hand, Satwik and Chirag, ranked ninth globally, were defeated in the round of 16 by Malaysia's Choong Hon Jian and Muhammad Haikal. After losing the first game, they managed to win the second. In the deciding game, they led 11-8 at the interval and extended their advantage to 17-12 but ultimately lost with scores of 21-14, 13-21, 22-20. This defeat marks their first loss to the Malaysian pair.