BASEL (SWITZERLAND), Mar 21: The Indian women’s doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand progressed to the quarterfinals of the Swiss Open with a straight-game win over compatriots Priya Konjengbam and Shruti Mishra here on Thursday.
The eighth seeded Commonwealth Games bronze medallists hardly broke any sweat as they brushed aside fellow Indians Priya and Shruti, ranked 75th in the world, 21-10 21-12 in 36 minutes.
World no. 26 Treesa and Gayatri, who are sharing the 14th place in the Olympic Games qualification ranking, will face Australia’s Setyana Mapasa and Angela Yu in the next round.
Later, world No. 20 Tanisha Crasto and Ashwini Ponnappa, who are 6,296 points ahead of Treesa and Gayatri in the Paris qualification race at 12th spot, lost 17-21 16-21 to Japan’s world No. 30 Rui Hirokami and Yuna Kato.
The race for Olympic qualification thus spiced up in women’s doubles as only the highest-ranked Indian pair inside top 16 by April end will make the cut for Paris.
Double Olympic medallist PV Sindhu, in-form Lakshya Sen, Kidambi Srikanth, Kiran George and Priyanshu Rajawat will be in action in the singles event later in the day.
The biggest face-off will be between Sindhu and 17-year-old Tomoka Miyazaki, who had claimed the gold medal at the 2022 world junior championships, and is coming into the tournament after winning her maiden Super 300 crown at Orleans Masters in France last week.
Sen will take on Chia Hao Lee of Chinese Taipei, while Srikanth will face top seed Lee Zii Jia. (PTI)
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