Top Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal stormed into the women's singles final of Denmark Open with an easy win over Gregoria Tunjung of Indonesia but Kidambi Srikanth suffered a straight game defeat in the men's singles semifinals to bow out of the tournament here on Saturday.
Olympic Bronze medallist Saina beat Tunjung 21-11, 21-12 in a one-sided semifinal match that lasted just 30 minutes.
Saina will face world number one and nemesis Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei in the summit clash on Sunday.
Tai Tzu has an overwhelming 12-5 career head-to-head record against Saina. Saina last defeated Tai Tzu in 2013 and since then the Chinese Taipei shuttler has been victorious in the last 10 matches between the two.
This year, world number 10 Saina has lost all her four matches against Tai Tzu, the last being the semifinal clash in the Asian Games in Jakarta in August.
In the semifinal match against Tunjung, it was, however, a cakewalk for Saina as she completely dominated from start to finish in both the games.
With Parupalli Kashyap, with whom she is getting married later this year, cheering her at the corner of the court, Saina reeled off easy points one after the other with her Indonesian rival not giving much resistance.
Saina was 10-4 ahead in no time and extended the lead to 17-8 before pocketing the first game in just 13 minutes.
Tunjung gave a semblance of a fight in the second game which lasted a bit longer than the first.
Saina took a 7-3 lead but Tunjung fought back to level scores at 7-7 but there was no looking back for the Indian from there on as she surged ahead with a series of points before pocketing the second game to win the match.
In the men's singles semifinals earlier in the day, Srikanth was completely off-colour, especially in the second game, as he went down tamely to world number one Kento Momota of Japan in 42 minutes.
However, there was not much to separate between the two initially as they were locked 10-10. But from there on, Momota surged ahead by reeling off four straight points.
World number six Srikanth narrowed down the gap to 13-15 but the Japanese continued his momentum to make it 20-13 to have seven game points. The Indian saved three game points but it was just a matter of one shot for Momota to go 1-0 up in the match.
The second game was even worse for Srikanth as he trailed all along from 4-4. There was a brief period of a fightback from Srikanth when he made the score 9-11 but from there on the Japanese was unstoppable as he won the second game quickly to pocket the match.
Earlier on Friday night, Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth stormed into the semifinals of the Denmark Open with hard-fought victories over Nozomi Okuhara and Sameer Verma respectively.
Saina, ranked 10th, recovered after the losing the first game to beat familiar foe and world number seven Okuhura of Japan 17-21, 21-16, 21-12 in the quarterfinal lasting 58 minutes on Friday night.
The final point of the match was a long rally which ended with the Japanese finding the net. It was a morale boosting for the Indian star, having lost her previous three meetings to Okuhara including the most recent one in Korea last month.
Saina had also lost to the 2017 World Champion during the team event at the Asian Games in August.
Overall, their head-to-head record stands at 7-4 in the Indian's favour.
Fellow Indian Srikanth too had to dig deep against countryman Verma with little separating the two in an intense men's singles quarterfinal.
In the end, world number six Srikanth prevailed over the 23-ranked Indian in an epic battle lasting an hour and 18 minutes with the final scoreline reading 22-20, 19-21, 23-21.
In the women's doubles, Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy's spirited campaign came to an end with a loss to top seeds, Yuki Fukushima and Sayaka Hirota, in the quarterfinals.
