Canada Open badminton | Lakshya Sen sails into final, Sindhu suffers semifinal loss to Yamaguchi

Commonwealth Games champion Lakshya Sen stormed into the final of the Canada Open Super 500 badminton tournament with a straight-game win over Japan’s Kenta Nishimoto in Calgary. Sen, who has slipped to world number 19 after struggling to find his form early in the season, saw off the world number 11 Japanese 21-17 21-14 to enter his second Super 500 final and first BWF summit clash in over a year.

Commonwealth Games champion Lakshya Sen stormed into the final of the Canada Open Super 500 badminton tournament with a straight-game win over Japan's Kenta Nishimoto in Calgary.

Sen, who has slipped to world number 19 after struggling to find his form early in the season, saw off the world number 11 Japanese 21-17 21-14 to enter his second Super 500 final and first BWF summit clash in over a year.

The 21-year-old Indian, who claimed a bronze at the 2021 World Championships, will face China's Li Shi Feng in the final.

"It was a pretty bad start, I couldn't control the shuttle well. The moment I got the rhythm at the net (it got better). Near-perfect netplay was the key and we were both trying to do that," Sen said.

"Eventually I took control at the net, the smashes were also working. Overall, good tactical game I played and I'm happy with my performance."

Double Olympic medallist PV Sindhu, however, couldn't produce her best and went down 14-21 15-21 to world No. 1 Akane Yamaguchi of Japan in her women's singles semifinal.

A former world number 6, Sen had undergone a nose surgery for a deviated septum after the World Championships last August and took a lot of time to recover post treatment.