Macau [China], August 1 : India's Commonwealth Games champion, Lakshya Sen and Tharun Mannepalli made it to the semifinals of the ongoing Macau Open on Friday, while the popular men's doubles duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty bowed out of the competition.
Tharun's continued his dream run during the BWF Super 300 tournament, beating Hu Zhe'an of China, the current junior world champion in his quarterfinal match at the Macao East Asian Games Dome, as per a press release from Olympics.com.
After an easy first game win, the Indian dropped the second one, but bounced back to win the match 21-12, 13-21, 21-18 despite a late fightback from Hu Zhe'an.
The 23-year-old had also previously pulled a shocking win against top seed Lee Cheuk Yiu of Hong Kong in the previous round.
Tharun's semifinal opponent will be Malaysia's Justin Hoh on Saturday. In their previous match, the Indian won at the Thailand Open earlier this year.
Sen, also a Paris Olympics 2024 semifinalist, world number 17, faced world number 77 Xuan Chen Zhu of China in the quarterfinals and won his match 21-14, 18-21, 21-14 in an hour and three minutes, despite dropping the second game.
This is Lakshya's best run in 2025 during any BWF World Tour so far and he will be taking on Indonesia's Alwi Farhan in the semis.
Meanwhile, Satwik and Chirag, the world number nine, lost the final 16 clash to Malaysia's Choong Hon Jian and Muhammad Haikal. The Indian duo dropped their first game, and in the second, they won. In the decider, they led by 11-8 at interval and extended their lead to 17-12, but still lost the match by 21-14, 13-21, 22-20. This was their first loss to the Malaysian duo.
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