Saina Nehwal crashed out of the women’s singles quarterfinals at the Singapore Open Super Series in Singapore on Friday, losing to Indonesia’s Lindaweni Fanetri.
The second seed lost to unseeded Lindaweni 21-17, 13-21, 13-21 in 58 minutes at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. The World No.13 avenged her first round loss last week at the Indonesia Open by beating the Hyderabadi in their second career meeting.
After a topsy-turvy start to the first game, Saina found legs to take a lead from 11-all to 17-13 and then went on to win the game in another five minutes.
The second game also started like the first, with the game being fought closely at the start with the Indonesian being the more aggressive of the two. Saina tried clawing back into the match, but Lindaweni pulled away to deny the Indian a straight games victory and levelled the match.
Lindaweni completely decimated the second seed in the decider by running away to a 12-3 lead from where Saina could not recover despite giving it her best shot and the Indian’s errors led Lindaweni to go on to win the game and the match with ease.
The World No.13 was clearly the better athlete on court with her smashes and drop shots proving too difficult for Saina to retrieve.
The Indonesian is now the only non-Chinese in the last four of the Super Series tournament and will face the winner of the match between seventh seed Shixian Wang and fourth seed Yihan Wang Saturday.
