Swiss Open: Crucial ties beckon for Indian shuttlers as race to Tokyo begins

Swiss Open: Crucial ties beckon for Indian shuttlers as race to Tokyo begins

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PV Sindhu
PV Sindhu

The Swiss Open Super 300 tournament will mark the start of the 2021 Olympic ranking calendar. The points earned in this tournament would be counted towards the players’ Race to Tokyo rankings which will decide their seedings and qualification for the Summer games.

Top players PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal have been put in the same bottom half of the draw and could meet each other at the semis if they win their respective matches. In the men’s section Kidambi Srikkanth and Sameer Verma kickstart the men’s singles competition. Both the men’s and women’s sections have been given an easy draw.

In the doubles category, all hopes will be on mixed doubles and men’s doubles. With Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa carrying on their great form from the Thailand Open, they would be the pair to watch out. The men’s doubles pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwik too have been in good form in their recent outings.

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Race to Tokyo Olympics

Srikanth Kidambi Denmark OPen
Srikanth Kidambi

With the Indian Open being the last tournament to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics all the players would need to perform well. Further, they need to finish below the 16th rank to qualify directly for the Olympics.

In the men’s singles, Sai Praneeth is placed 13th as of now. He would need to be below the 16th rank to qualify directly. The next close contender is Srikanth placed 22nd who needs to improve his rankings.

In the women’s singles, PV Sindhu is placed 7th and would ideally make the cut. The next close player is Saina who is placed at 22nd. With the current form she is in it looks difficult for her to make the cut.

In the Doubles section, Satwik and Chirag are placed 10th. No other doubles team apart from this pair look like they are bound to make the cut.

With a good number of tournaments to be held till April the Indian players have important tasks at hand as they need to perform well and look to qualify directly to the Olympics.

Also Read: Danish badminton star Mathias Boe joins Indian camp as coach for doubles team