Tai Tzu-ying secures India Open semifinal berth

Taipei, Jan. 19 (CNA) Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎) defeated He Bingjiao (何冰嬌) of China on Friday to secure a spot in the 2024 India Open women's singles semifinals in New Delhi.

With the win, Tai will play Yeo Jia Min of Singapore on Saturday. Yeo defeated world No. 1 An Se Young of South Korea in their quarterfinal match Friday when An pulled out with a knee injury after trailing 21-19, 3-0.

Tai is 4-0 against Yeo, and has not lost a game in any of the four matches. Her most recent win against Yeo was a 21-11, 22-20 victory in the first round of the Denmark Open in late October 2023.

Currently ranked third in the world, Tai continued a recent strong run of play after a difficult second half of 2023 by completely outclassing her Chinese opponent in the Super 750 event.

Tai stormed out to huge leads in each game, 12-3 in the first and 11-1 in the second, behind precision shotmaking and a flurry of He's errors, and closed those games out without much difficulty to defeat He in 36 minutes.

The 29-year-old Taiwanese veteran also defeated He in the Malaysia Open quarterfinals, and Friday's triumph gave Tai a 16-4 advantage over He head-to-head.

Tai's recent surge began when she won the BWF World Tour Finals in December and then finished second at the Malaysia Open last week.

Also Friday, Taiwan's Ye Hong-wei (葉宏蔚) and Lee Chia-hsin (李佳馨) achieved their best result ever in a tournament at the Super 750 level or better by reaching the semifinals after topping Seo Seung-jae and Chae Yu-jung of South Korea.

The world No. 13 Taiwanese duo outlasted the world No. 3 2023 BWF mixed doubles world champions 21-19, 21-19 in 40 minutes.

In Saturday's semifinals, Ye and Lee will square off against Dechapol Puavaranukroh and Sapsiree Taerattanachai of Thailand, the winners of the 2021 BWF World Championships who are currently ranked seventh in the world.

Super 750 events are the second highest-tiered tournaments on the professional badminton tour after Super 1000 events. In 2023, Ye and Lee reached the mixed doubles semifinals in a Super 500 event, the Toyota Gazoo Racing Thailand Open 2023 held at the end of May.

In the men's singles, Wang Tzu-wei (王子維) of Taiwan was scheduled to play eighth seed H.S. Prannoy of India later Friday for a spot in the semifinals.