French Open: Satwiksairaj-Chirag face shock first round exit

Paris [France], October 22 (ANI): India’s popular men’s doubles duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty faced a shocking ouster in the first round of the ongoing French Open badminton tournament on Wednesday. As per Olympics.com, they faced a loss to the unseeded Indonesian pair of pair of Rahmat Hidayat and Muhammad Rian Ardianto, going down to them within just 42 minutes by 21-18, 22-20 in a match that was close, but yet so one-sided, as evident by a two-game finish. This marked the second meeting between these two teams. Just last week, the Indian duo had prevailed over the Indonesians in the Denmark Open quarter-finals. Ardianto is a two-time men’s doubles World Championships medallist, while Hidayat was part of Indonesia’s gold-winning

team at this year’s Asian Mixed Team Championships. Earlier, India’s 18-year-old Unnati Hooda, ranked world number 35, secured an impressive come-from-behind win in women’s singles, outclassing world No. 39 Letshanaa Karupathevan of Malaysia 11-21, 21-13, 21-16 in her first-round match. Anupama Upadhyaya and Anmol Kharb, meanwhile, lost their women’s singles openers. Anupama succumbed to China’s Han Yue, fourth in the badminton rankings, 21-15, 21-11, while Anmol went down to world number one An Se-young of the South Korea 21-15, 21-9. In the men’s singles, Ayush Shetty continued his poor run with a fifth successive first round on the BWF World Tour 2025 season after going down 21-19, 21-19 against Japan’s Koki Watanabe. (ANI)