India’s Lakshya Sen and Tharun Mannepalli had to dig deep to enter the semi-finals of the men’s singles event at the Macau Open 2025 badminton tournament on Friday, while Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty bowed out from doubles.
Tharun Mannepalli continued his dream run at the BWF Super 300 badminton tournament and defeated Hu Zhe’an of China, the reigning junior world champion, in his quarter-final clash at the Macao East Asian Games Dome.
After leading 11-9 at the mid-game interval, the Indian badminton player pulled away from Hu Zhe’an to win the opener convincingly.
He then dropped the second game but recovered in the third to win the match 21-12, 13-21, 21-18 despite a late fightback from Hu Zhe’an.
The 23-year-old Indian shuttler had also pulled off a big upset in the previous round to defeat top seed Lee Cheuk Yiu of Hong Kong China.
Tharun Mannepalli will face Justin Hoh of Malaysia in the semi-finals on Saturday. The only previous match between the two was won by the Indian at the Thailand Open earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Paris 2024 semi-finalist Lakshya Sen, 17th in the badminton rankings, faced world No. 77 Xuan Chen Zhu of the People’s Republic of China in the quarter-finals.
Lakshya won the opening game comfortably but lost the second despite leading 17-14 at one stage.
However, he regrouped in the third game and dominated it to close out the match 21-14, 18-21, 21-14 in an hour and three minutes.
This is Lakshya Sen’s deepest run in any 2025 BWF World Tour event so far. He will take on Indonesia’s Alwi Farhan in the semis.
Meanwhile, India’s top men’s doubles duo and world No. 9 Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty lost in the quarter-finals against Malaysia’s Choong Hon Jian and Muhammad Haikal.
They dropped the first game but rallied in the second and led 11-8 at the interval in the third. Satwik-Chirag went on to extend their lead to 17-12 in the decider and even had a match point but couldn’t capitalise as they lost the contest 21-14, 13-21, 22-20.
This was the Indian pair’s first defeat in two matches against the Malaysian duo.