New Delhi, Oct 20: Former junior national champion, Tanvi Lad reached her maiden international final when she notched up a thrilling three-game victory over seventh seed Yuka Kusunose of Japan in the women’s singles semifinal of the Swiss International Challenge badminton tournament in Yverdon-Ies-Bains, Switzerland today.
Sixth seed Tanvi stuck to her style of grinding down the opponent with long rallies and the game plan worked perfectly for the Mumbai girl who won 16-21, 21-14, 21-19 against Yuka in the semifinal that lasted over an hour. She set up a summit clash against Beiwen Zhang of USA.
While Tanvi made it to her maiden final, the promising run of India’s doubles pairs came to an end at the semifinal stage with the mixed doubles combination of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and K Maneesha and men’s doubles pair of Chopra and Akshay Dewalkar losing their hard fought encounters.
Chopra and Dewalkar, who had bagged the bronze medal in the Bulgarian International last week, tried their best to join Tanvi in the final but went down 21-18, 21-16 against the French combination of Lucas Korvee and Brice Leverdez.
Earlier, the mixed doubles pair of Maneesha and Chopra fought valiantly against top seeds Vitalij Durkin and Nina Vislova of Russia but their efforts were not enough as they went down 21-15, 21-11. (PTI)
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