London Olympics bronze medallist shuttler SainaNehwal today opened her campaign at the Hong Kong Super Series on a positivenote, prevailing over Aprilla Yuswandari of Indonesia in straight games toreach the second round of women's singles event today.
The world number three Saina took time to get into thegroove but went from strength to strength as the match progressed to notch up a22-20 21-8 win over Aprilla at the Hong Kong Coliseum in Kowloon.
Pranaav Chopra and Siki Reddy N also reached the secondround with a 21-19 21-15 victory over Phillip Chew and Jamie Subandhi of theUSA in the mixed doubles competition.
Returing to action after skipping the China Open, Saina wasequally good with her smashes and net play as the Indian registered as many as15 smash winners and equal number of net winners in the 33-minute contest.
After gaining a narrow 3-1 lead early on, Saina lost thelead for a brief time when Aprilla went 8-6 ahead. However, the Indian restoredher lead, moving to 14-10, before the Indonesian clawed back at 20-20.
But Saina didn't give any chance to Aprilla after that andclosed the opening game in her favour with two consequtive points.
In the second game, the third seeded Indian was lagging 1-4initially but came back in style, registering eight straight points to move to9-4. She then reeled off another 10 points and in a jiffy she was 19-6 ahead.She closed the issue in her favour comfortably after that.
In another match, Tarun Kona and Ashwini Ponnappa lost theiropening match against top seed Chinese pair of Chen XU and Jin MA 21-15 21-16in the mixed doubles competition.