Abu Dhabi Masters Super 100 Results Day 6: Unnati Hooda wins the singles title while Ashwini Ponnappa and Tanisha Crasto win the doubles crown

The Abu Dhabi Masters Super 100 tournament at the ADNEC Marina Hall in the United Arab Emirates saw a thrilling set of finals take place on October 22. The Super 100 tournament featured several Indian shuttlers, and Indian badminton fans even got to witness a few of them take home the women’s singles and the women’s doubles titles.

Ashwini Ponnappa and Tanisha Crasto achieved their first BWF title as a pair, while 16-year-old Unnati Hooda won her second BWF Super 100 title. Unnati beat fellow Indian Samiya Imad Farooqui in the final.

A closer look at the Abu Dhabi Masters Super 100 tournament results

The women’s singles final turned out to be an exciting showdown between two promising Indian badminton players, namely Unnati Hooda and Samiya Imad Farooqui. The first set saw Unnati play some incredibly stable badminton; the young shuttler kept the shuttle in the court and made minimal errors, helping her take an 11-7 lead at the interval.

Unnati managed to keep the lead for a little while before Samiya played some beautiful cross-court strokes and almost leveled matters. Unnati eventually won the set 21-16.

The second set of the match saw Samiya take an early 5-1 lead, and she continued to keep a nice four-point cushion going into the mid-game interval. However, the break gave Unnati a chance to regroup and almost managed to square things off by taking the game to 14–15. Things continued to remain neck and neck until Samiya was at game point.

This, however, did not affect Unnati, and the young shuttler managed to keep her composure and win the next 3 points and the match. The final score of the match, which lasted 40 minutes, was 21-16, 22-20. This title marks her second Super 100 tournament victory in singles after the Odisha Open in 2022.

In the women's doubles category, Ashwini Ponnappa and Tanisha Crasto defeated Denmark's Julie Finne-Ipsen and Mai Surrow in a closely contested match with scores of 21-16, 16-21, 21-8.

The first set witnessed both pairs play some incredibly attacking badminton and kept scores almost level until the 15-point mark. But the Indian duo then mixed things up and took the set 21-16.

The second game saw the Danish opponents fight back and take the game with an identical score as the first. In the third and final game of the match, Tanisha and Ashwini played some beautiful attacking strokes while also maintaining a solid defense with newfound energy. They completely dominated their Danish counterparts and won the game 21-8.

A few other commendable performances in the tournament were by Raghu M. and Kiran George, both of whom reached the men’s singles semifinal, and Sikki Reddy and Arathi Sara Sunil, who managed a similar feat in the women’s doubles category.

India’s top badminton players, including PV Sindhu, and the World No. 1 pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will next be seen in action at the French Open 2023 BWF Super 750 event starting on October 24.