Olympic silver medallist PV Sindhu began her quest for gold with a 21-7, 21-10 win over Ksenia Polikarpova of Israel in her first match of Group J of the women’s singles at the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday.
The 6th seed defeated Israel's unseeded Ksenia Polikarpova in straight games -- 21-7, 21-10 -- in just 29 minutes.
"Even though my opponent was lower-ranked, I didn't want to assume it would be easy. It is important to be focused. I made sure we had some rallies and I got used to the court.” Sindhu said after the match.
"It's important to make sure you play all your strokes and get used to them on the court because you can't play them all of a sudden against a stronger opponent, you can't do that. It's important to know that your strokes are going well."
Sindhu will next face Cheung Ngan Yi on Wednesday. Only one shuttler from the group will progress to the Round of 16.
Sindhu added, "Each match is important, and it's one match at a time. I'm thinking about my next opponent.”
“There are a lot more responsibilities and definitely there will be pressure, even the last time in 2016 (Rio de Janeiro), I was not a known person, but I think now people are looking at me and knowing my game, I think it is comparatively tough and it’s not going to be easy”, PV Sindhu said.
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Earlier on Saturday, India's Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty notched up a stunning 21-16 16-21 27-25 win over the world no. 3 pair of Yang Lee and Chi-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 world
number 47 Misha Zilberman of Israel in a 41-minute men's singles group D match.