Indian shuttler Lakshya Sen sailed into the men’s singles semifinals with a straight-game win over compatriot BM Rahul Bharadwaj at the Dutch Open Super 100 tournament in Almere, Netherlands.
The 18-year-old from Almora, who had clinched the Belgian Open last month, beat Bharadwaj 21-9 21-16 in just 37 minutes on Friday night.
Sen — who has won the Asian Junior championship, a silver at Youth Olympic Games and a bronze medal at World Junior Championships last year — will now take on Felix Burestedt in the last four clash. The shuttler from Sweden is ranked 75 in the world (three places below Sen) and this will be the first meeting between the two on the BWF circuit.
Sen played a dominating game, moving to a 6-0 lead early on and then jumped to 11-3 at the interval.
He continued his march ahead, reeling off six straight points at 13-8 to move to 18-8 and soon pocketed the game comfortably.
In the second game, Bharadwaj opened up a 4-2 lead for a brief period but Sen came back to turn the tables and surged to 11-6 at the break.
Bharadwaj tried to make a comeback but Sen kept his nose ahead to eventually shut the door on his opponent.
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