PV Sindhu wins Macau Open Grand Prix Gold third year in a row

Two-time defending champion P V Sindhu completed a hat-trick of women’s singles title at the USD 120,000 Macau Open Grand Prix Gold after defeating Japan’s Minatsu Mitani in the finals here ON Sunday.

Sindhu produced a dominating game to notch up a 21-9, 21-23, 21-14 win against sixth seed Mitani in a women’s singles match that lasted an hour and six minutes here.

World No. 12 Indian dished out some superb strokes and acute angled returns to bamboozle the Japanese, besides making some sound judgements at the baseline to get across Mitani, who struggled to keep the shuttle inside the court.

Sindhu dominated the proceedings right from the start as she rode on the errors of Mitani to reach 11-5 at the break. Mitani came up with an aggressive rally and sealed it with a down the line smash but she failed to curb her errors and most of her returns went wide and long to allow Sindhu lead 17-6 in a jiffy.

Sindhu, on the other hand, was mostly accurate with her smashes and drops as she lead 19-9. The Indian came up with some acute angled returns to trouble Mitani and reached the game point with a smash. The Japanese then went wide to hand over the first game to Sindhu.

After the change of sides, Sindhu once again started on a confident note but she also began missing the lines and Mitani lead 4-2. The Indian checked her unforced errors and came up with stunning smashes to wrest the lead and move to 7-4.

Sindhu made a few wrong judgments at the baseline and also found the net to allow Mitani to surge ahead. At 10-9, Mitani produced her first winner — a cross court smash — which left a stretched Sindhu stranded to go into the break with two-point lead.