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The Indian women's doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand bowed out of the ongoing Macau Open badminton tournament after a loss in the semifinals on Saturday.
Treesa and Gopichand, ranked world number 23 in Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings, lost to the Chinese Taipei pair of Hung En-Tzu and Hsieh Pei Shan, ranked 54th in the world by 17-21, 21-16, 10-21, as per Olympics.com. With this loss, the Indian challenge at the competition is officially over. The semifinal started on a competitive note before the Chinese Taipei pair started to gain momentum and built a 13-8 lead in the first game. Though Treesa and Gopichand levelled the scores at 15-all, their opponents took the next six points successively and hence the game as well. The third-seeded Indian pair stepped up in the second game and displayed some fine shot making. This improvement gave them results, as they won the second game to set up an exciting decider. However, the final game proved to extremely one-sided in Chinese Taipei's favour and won them the match. This is the third time Hung and Hsieh eliminated Treesa and Gopichand from a BWF World Tour tournament this year. Though the Indian pair emerged victorious in their first meeting at US Open 2024, the Chinese Taipei duo has now made a hat-trick of wins, with victories at Canada Open, China Open and now here in Macau. Treesa and Gayatri had also made it to the semi-finals of the Singapore Open BWF Super 750 event in June but are yet to win a title this year. On Friday, the world number 23 ranked duo, seeded third in the competition, secured a win over sixth-seeded Hsu Yin-Hui and Lin Jhih Yun in 39 minutes by 21-12, 21-17 in two straight games in the quarterfinals. On the other hand, Kidambi Srikanth, returning to the sport after an injury during the Singapore Open back in May, crashed out in the quarterfinals of the Macau Open, losing to Hong Kong's Angus Ng Ka Long 21-16, 21-12. The World number 38 Indian, also a World Championships silver medalist, struggled in the first game as Angus led by 1-6. However, Kidambi fought back to make it 15-15, but losing four successive points pushed him on the back foot once again and he never recovered from it. It was Kidambi's fifth loss to Angus in nine matches. They had earlier met in the Malaysia Open this year, in which Angus secured a win in two straight matches. Kidambi, the former world number one, made it to the semis of the Swiss Open this year in March but has failed to make it beyond the pre-quarterfinals on nine occasions this year. (ANI)
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