Macau: India’s star players Lakshya Sen and Tarun Mannapalli continued their brilliant performance and entered the semi -finals of the men’s singles of the Macau Open Super 300 badminton tournament on Friday.
23-year-old Mannepalli, ranked 47th in the world, defeated Hu Ze of China, ranked 87th, 21-12, 13-21, 21-18 in a 75-minute match.
At the same time, Commonwealth Sports Champion second seeded target defeated China’s Shuan Chen Zhu 21-14, 18-21, 21-14.
Now the target will face Indonesia’s fifth seed Alvi Farhan while Mannapalli will compete with Malaysia’s Justin Hoh.
Mannapalli has made it to the semi -finals of a BWF Super 300 tournament for the first time. Earlier, he reached the quarter -finals of the German Open in February.
Mannapalli, who joined Pullela Gopichand Academy four years ago, defeated Hong Kong’s top seed Lee Cheauk Yiu in the last round.
Mannapalli, who won the gold medal in the National Games, was walking 4-7 at one time in the first game, but then he took the lead 12-9. After this, he won the game by making six consecutive points from 15-11.
In the second game, Hu performed vigorously and kept dominance after 6-2 and kept his edge up to 15-6 and soon won the game.
In the third and decisive game, Mannapalli took a 5–0 lead and maintained its lead by 19-15. The Indian player lost three points after this. Mannapalli, however, maintained patience and confirmed the victory by putting an accurate push on Hu’s backhand corner and lifted his arms up in the celebration.
Mannapalli started playing badminton at Khammam, Telangana at the age of eight. He came to Hyderabad after tenth grade.
