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Indian shuttle queen Saina Nehwal came back from a deficit in the second game to book her berth in the quarter-finals of the $600,000 Victor Korea Open in Seoul, Korea on Thursday. The fifth seed needed 36 minutes to see off the 80th ranked Kim Ga Eun 21-18, 21-18.
Up next for Saina is a tough challenge as she faces the third seed Nozomi Okuhara of Japan. The former world champion prevailed over Hong Kong’s Yip Pui Yin 21-16, 21-15 in 34 minutes.
Nehwal leads the head-to-head meetings with Okuhara 6-3, but the Japanese won their last two showdowns, even though both went the distance.
Saina made a bright start to her second round match against Kim Ga Eun, a player she has never met before. However, she could not keep her opponent away from her for a long time and the game became competitive.
Nehwal raced ahead to 10-2 following which, the Korean finally started to show some fighting spirit and reduced the gap between the two to four points. After Saina regained control and went up to 16-11, the resilient Kim once more pegged back Saina. She kept picking up points until levelling the score at 16-16. From 17-17, Saina took over the reins and nudged ahead to take the game.
Saina then struggled to keep up with Kim at the start of the second game. Kim was intent on producing fiery, aggressive strokes that Saina failed to find an answer to.
Within a flash, Kim opened up a huge lead of 7-1, which she managed to extend to 11-6 at the mid-game interval. The steady and experienced Saina came back from the break to claw her way back into the game.
She first made it a difference of two points between them when she trailed 10-12. After that, Nehwal cut down on her errors to draw level at 13-13. With three more points in her kitty, the former World No. 1 made further progress to 16-13.
Even though Kim kept fighting until the end, she wasn’t able to douse the fire in Saina, who closed out the win on her second match point.
