Olympic silvermedallist PV Sindhu began her quest for gold with a 21-7, 21-10 winover Ksenia Polikarpova of Israel in her first match of Group J ofthe women’s singles at the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday.
The 6th seed defeatedIsrael's unseeded Ksenia Polikarpova in straight games -- 21-7, 21-10 -- injust 29 minutes.
"Even though myopponent was lower-ranked, I didn't want to assume it would be easy. It isimportant to be focused. I made sure we had some rallies and I got used to thecourt.” Sindhu said after the match.
"It's importantto make sure you play all your strokes and get used to them on the courtbecause you can't play them all of a sudden against a stronger opponent, youcan't do that. It's important to know that your strokes are going well."
Sindhu will next faceCheung Ngan Yi on Wednesday. Only one shuttler from the group will progress tothe Round of 16.
Sindhu added, "Eachmatch is important, and it's one match at a time. I'm thinking about my nextopponent.”
“There are a lot moreresponsibilities and definitely there will be pressure, even the last time in2016 (Rio de Janeiro), I was not a known person, but I think now people arelooking at me and knowing my game, I think it is comparatively tough and it’snot going to be easy”, PV Sindhu said.
Earlier on Saturday,India's Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty notched up astunning 21-16 16-21 27-25 win over the world no. 3 pair of Yang Lee andChi-Lin Wang of Chinese Taipei in their opening Group Stage match.
However, 13th seeded B Sai Praneeth suffered a shock 17-21 15-21 loss to worldnumber 47 Misha Zilberman of Israel in a 41-minute men's singles group D match.