It’s been a strange old season for Lakshya Sen. After two first-round exits to start the year, he played one of his best matches of the year at the All England Open to defeat Jonatan Christie in straight games, then promptly lost in the next round. Then a few more early exits followed, before he showed glimpses of returning to form at the Macau Open, reaching the semifinals. It seemed he was building up good momentum going into the World Championships in Paris, but then came the draw from hell as he was pitted against world No 1 Shi Yu Qi in the first round, where he lost despite playing a fairly decent match. Coming out of the Worlds disappointment, he put together a fine run at the Hong Kong Open last week to reach his first final since last November. But on Wednesday, that hard-earned momentum was lost once more as he tamely exited the China Masters Super 750 without much of a fight, losing 11-21, 10-21 against France’s Toma Junior Popov in just 30 minutes.
Popov made the better start to the match, opening up a 5-3 lead after a really tight net exchange, perhaps an area where Lakshya would have expected to control coming into the match. A big booming smash to Lakshya’s backhand from the middle of the court saw the Frenchman take an 8-3 lead, followed by another down-the-line smash from the deep forehand corner, kissing the sideline for 10-3. Lakshya’s attacks seemed to lack any zing, while he wasn’t as sharp in defence as he was against Chou Tien Chen last week, going into the interval with a massive 3-11 deficit.
Out of the interval, Lakshya seemed to take more initiative; he missed a couple of shuttles when aiming for the lines to either flank of Popov, but at least now he was going for the lines, clawing his way back to 9-15 with an up-tempo midcourt exchange. But it happened to be only a flash in the pan as Popov ran away with the opening game.
At 1-6 in the second game, Lakshya’s frustration came out as he half-smashed, not the shuttle, but his racket after harmlessly sending a cross-lift beyond the baseline. Then, a moment of controversy. Popov’s smash to Lakshya’s backhand side was seemingly called wide by the line judge (not visible on the one-camera broadcast setup for Court 3), and the Indian was celebrating the point. Popov looked mystified from the other end when it was called out and sought the intervention of the chair umpire, who gave the point to the Frenchman, leaving Lakshya confused and frustrated. There was more arching of the head backward soon after as he missed a bread-and-butter inside-out smash to trail 4-11 in Game 2. As Popov dominated the net to win a superb flat rally and go up 14-6, the writing was on the wall for Lakshya.
On Sunday, Lakshya had spoken about building momentum on the tour after his impressive run to the final, taking out a couple of his national teammates, HS Prannoy and Ayush Shetty, and more importantly, coming through a thriller in the semifinal against Chou. “A good week… especially coming back from World Championships where things didn’t go as planned, but I think we had trained well for it,” Lakshya had told BWF. “Three weeks, four weeks we had put in a good work, so now it was time that I keep the momentum up because even at the World Champs it was a really good match (against eventual champion Shi Yu Qi), a close match that I lost. So, a lot of positives to take from this tournament, especially winning good matches in three-setters. A lot of positives to take, a lot of the things that I did back maybe two months, three months back are helping, so I just want myself to believe in myself more and keep going.”
It was perhaps the physical exertions from the long matches in Hong Kong – although that can hardly be an excuse when a veteran like Chou Tien Chen turns up week in and week out to beat younger players, as he showed against Ayush Shetty on Tuesday. For Lakshya, unfortunately, that head of steam he had built up in Hong Kong was lost a week later in Shenzhen.
