Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu continued her unbeaten run while debutant Sameer Verma also qualified for the knockout stage with a straight-game win in his last Group B match at the BWF World Tour Finals.
The top-16 in the world by April-end will make the cut for the Olympics.
Newly-crowned China Open champion P V Sindhu and Saina Nehwal entered the quarterfinals of the women's singles competition at the Hong Kong Open Super Series tournament on a fruitful day for Indian shuttlers in Kowloon. Sindhu, who bagged her maiden Super Series Premier title last week at the China Open just months after winning the silver at Rio Olympics, trounced Chinese Taipei's Hsu Ya Ching 21-10 21-14, while Saina dished out a gruelling performance against Japan's Sayaka Sato to edge prevail 21-18 9-21 21-16.
The Rio Olympics gold medal contest in badminton women's singles between India's P V Sindhu and Spain's Carolina Marin attracted 17.2 million TV viewers, according to the broadcasters.
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty gained a place to achieve a career-best ranking
Former India skipper Virat Kohli, four-time grand slam winner Naomi Osaka of Japan and decorated gymnast Simon Biles of the USA, are some of the star athletes who have been candid about their struggles with mental health.
Three-time champion Saina Nehwal registered a 21-18, 21-15 win against PV Sindhu, a two-time winner, in the summit clash.
The women's doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand lost to top seeds Chen Qing Chen and Jia Yi Fan of China 18-21, 11-21.
The core of the team remains the same with HS Prannoy, Lakshya Sen and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty in good form and the Indian team would hope the rub of the green also goes their way when it begins campaign on Thursday.
Young shuttlers PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth scored contrasting victories to win the women's and men's singles titles respectively at the 78th Senior National Badminton Championships in Delhi on Monday.
Prannoy and Sen played five times in 2022 with Sen coming into the match with a slender 3-2 advantage.
Srikanth lost to Ireland's unseeded player Nguyen Nhat 11-21, 21-15, 12-21
Despite clinching the Macau Open title for the third time, India's ace shuttler P V Sindhu remained static at 12th position in the latest BWF world ranking released on Thursday. Saina Nehwal also held on to her number two position but a poor run of form saw K Srikanth lose a spot and slip to World No. 9.
Ace Indian shuttlers Saina Nehwal and HS Prannoy crashed out in the second round of the China Open Super Series after suffering straight game defeats in their respective events.
H S Prannoy stunned World No 10 Kanta Tsuneyama while ace Indian women shuttlers PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal also sailed into the second round of the Malaysia Masters, in Kuala Lumpur, on Wednesday. World Championships bronze-medallist B Sai Praneeth and the seasoned Kidambi Srikanth, though, bowed out of the men's singles events.
The third-seeded Indian defeated World No. 39 Saena Kawakami of Japan 21-15, 21-13 in the opening round at the Olympic Sports Center Xincheng Gymnasium.
PV Sindhu, who also won a silver medal in the 2016 Rio Olympics, admitted that she felt bad when people said she has a 'final phobia'. She was desperate to win the World Championships title last year after a string of runner-up finishes
Top seeds P V Sindhu and K Srikanth notched up contrasting victories to advance to the third round of the $120,000 Indonesia Masters Grand Prix Gold tournament, in Malang, on Thursday.
Top Indian shuttlers P V Sindhu and Ajay Jayaram notched up contrasting victories in the women's and men's singles competition respectively to reach the semi-finals of the $120,000 Malaysia Masters Grand Prix Gold, in Kuching.
Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu suffered another second round defeat when she went down fighting against He Bingjiao of China in the women's singles competition at the $300,000 French Open Super Series badminton tournament in Paris on Friday.
PV Sindhu and HS Prannoy had lost in the quarter-finals in the women's and men's singles respectively.
Sindhu' Hyderabad Hunters and Tai Tzu's Bengaluru Raptors can meet each other on January 31 in the third leg in Hyderabad.
CallHealth is promoted by Sandhya Raju, the daughter-in-law of B Ramalinga Raju, founder of the scam-hit Satyam Computers.
CallHealth is promoted by Sandhya Raju, the daughter-in-law of B Ramalinga Raju, founder of the scam-hit Satyam Computers.
Riding on her title-triumph at the Malaysia Masters Grand Prix Gold, India's P V Sindhu, on Thursday, jumped one place to be just outside the top 10 in the latest BWF ranking.
Legendary Sachin Tendulkar along with chess wizard Viswanathan Anand and tennis ace Sania Mirza are likely to grace India's first ever day-night Test against Bangladesh at the Eden Gardens.
Just like in her campaign opener against Japan's Akane Yamaguchi on Wednesday, Sindhu squandered a game advantage to lose yet again in the year-ending BWF World Tour Final
Intanon still holds on to the dream of an Olympic medal.
Sindhu had resumed training last month under the supervision of Korean coach Park Tae-Sang after the Sports Authority of India
Sindhu has fallen in the early stages at all tournaments except the French Open since winning her maiden World Championship title in August.
Don't do any strange things in preparation ahead of Olympics, Gopichand's advise to shuttlers
It was Sindhu's third successive loss to Marin, who had won both the Super 1000 events in Thailand in January before finishing runners-up at the HSBC BWF World Tour Finals.
'It is the first time that India badminton player has won two Olympic medals in badminton, so it is a great achievement not only for Sindhu but also a big moment for my teaching life.'
He is known to be a demanding coach but Pullela Gopichand is of the opinion that Olympic silver medallist PV Sindhu's odd defeats can't be termed as her failure, not even by a single per cent.
India's badminton ace P V Sindhu entered the summit clash of BWF World Tour Finals with a hard fought win over Akane Yamaguchi of Japan in the semi-finals, in Bali, on Saturday.
Sindhu yet again struggled to buck the trend of early exits
P V Sindhu's title defence lay in tatters after suffering a shock straight-game loss to hitherto unknown Chinese Gao Fangjie in the quarter-finals of the China Super Series Premier in Fuzhou.
Reigning World champion P V Sindhu and B Sai Praneeth were handed easy group stage outings in the badminton draws unveiled on Thursday for the Tokyo Olympics, starting on July 23.
Sindhu lost 7-21, 11-21 to World No. 3 Okuhara in a lop-sided contest.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, on Sunday, congratulated star India shuttler P V Sindhu for winning the Korea Open Super Series title in Seoul.
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