PV Sindhu defeats World No. 1 and reigning world champion Akane Yamaguchi to win historic Japan Open Super 750 title

On Sunday, under the lights of the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium and in front of a crowd that had come to cheer for one of their own, the 31-year-old Indian delivered the answer in the most emphatic way possible: a straight-games demolition of world No. 1 Akane Yamaguchi, 21-17, 21-17, to become the first Indian in history to win the Japan Open.

PV Sindhu outplays home favourite Akane Yamaguchi to script Indian badminton history

Up until Sunday, no Indian shuttler, male or female, had ever won the BWF Super 750 Japan Open. Not only did Sindhu win, but she did it by defeating a three-time world champion at home in a rivalry that had been moving away from her in recent years.

Sindhu’s last title of any kind on the BWF tour had come at the Syed Modi International back in 2024, meaning Sunday ended a two-year drought. But her last title of truly major standing was the 2019 World Championship gold in Basel, which is why this win is being framed as her biggest since then — the Japan Open Super 750 crown is the closest she has come, in scale and prestige, to matching that career-defining moment in the seven years since. She hadn't won a title outside India since the 2022 Singapore Open. Against Yamaguchi specifically, the recent record was grim — Sindhu hadn’t beaten her in a completed match in four years, and their most recent meeting, at this year's Malaysia Open, had ended not in a contest but in a retirement.

But this time, Sindhu raced out to an early 3-0 lead, and though Yamaguchi clawed back to level the score and even edged ahead at the mid-game interval, the turning point arrived in the form of a marathon 36-shot rally that Sindhu won to restore parity. From there, she simply took over — mixing her trademark smashes with sharper, more patient net play, opening a 16-12 cushion, and closing out the first game before repeating the formula almost point-for-point in the second.

With Sunday's victory, a career that has repeatedly rewritten Indian badminton's record books continues. At the age of eighteen, Sindhu became the first Indian woman to win a medal at the BWF World Championships in 2013, marking her international debut. She repeated the bronze a year later. By 2016, she had advanced considerably further, reaching the Rio Olympics final and capturing India's first-ever Olympic badminton medal—a silver that turned her into a household name.

She won silver at the 2017 and 2018 World Championships, coming painfully close to the top step each time. In 2019, she made history by defeating Japan's Nozomi Okuhara in the Basel final to become the first Indian, male or female, to win a World Championship gold in badminton. Along the road, they won the 2018 BWF World Tour Finals championship, silver in the Asian Games, gold in the team event at the Commonwealth Games, and silver in the singles competition. She became the first Indian woman to win two individual Olympic medals when she added a bronze medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed because to the pandemic.

At 31, with an Olympic gold still the one major prize to elude her, Sindhu's Japan Open triumph is unlikely to be read as a career capstone. If anything, in Indian badminton circles it is already being discussed as a reset.

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