NewzVille Sports Desk
Victor Lai of Canada stunned second seed Kodai Naraoka to make the final of the YONEX Canada Open 2025 – his first final on the HSBC BWF World Tour.
The 20 years old outplayed the Japanese world No.7 in a marathon 98 minutes, winning the thriller by 21-19 16-21 21-17.
World no 72 Lai, who has had a breakout year winning the Pan Am Championships, will be up against another Japanese, Kenta Nishimoto, in the final, who won another thriller to Kidambi Srikanth of India.
The other semifinal took long with Nishimoto holding off Kidambi Srikanth 19-21 21-14 21-18 in 78 minutes.
Earlier in the quarter final class Srikanth had out stunned the first seed and world no 6 Chouhan Tien Chen of Chinese Taipei in straight sets 21-18 21-9.
Home crowd had mix bag of emotions as Canada suffered a blow in the last match of the day, with four-time champion and home favourite Michelle Li falling to Manami Suizu 21-18 21-13.
In the first set both had chances, but Suizu has won 21-18 and went on comfortabley in the 2nd to pocket the match.
Suizu takes on Vietnam’s Nguyen Thuy Linh, who prevailed over Amalie Schulz in another thriller which took 56 minutes to finish the game by 21-23 21-11 21-10.
