World Badminton Championships 2017: Top 5 female contenders

PV Sindhu

Sindhu

In the past four years, PV Sindhu has demonstrated multiple times that she is a big match player. As a teenager, she clinched back-to-back bronze medals from the World Championships in 2013 and 2014 even when she was just a fledgling talent.

At Rio, she pushed aside a few months of struggle on the Tour to create history and bring home the Olympic silver.

Naturally the expectations have risen and she too has delivered since then by grabbing three titles in the past one year.

Thus this time, the roles have reversed. Being the fourth seed, PV Sindhu is now very much the hunted instead of the hunter that she was in the previous few editions.

It’s not the bronze she is aiming for anymore, it’s the gold she has set her eyes upon. With her higher targets, the perils too are more.

Fifth seed Sun Yu could pose a threat in the quarter-finals, especially because the Chinese has a 4-3 head-to-head record over the Indian and won their most recent showdown at the 2016 Dubai World Superseries Finals.

This will be a stern test of Sindhu’s improved game and mentality. If she can get past this hurdle, she could well be on the way to bettering the colour of her medal this time.