BWF World Tour Finals: PV Sindhu is the only Indian nominated for the season finale

The top eight players on the BWF World Tour Rankings will be named in the Race To Guangzhou for the upcoming edition of the year-ending annual tournament.

The players in question have been confirmed after the Hylo Open Round of 32 matches in Saarbrucken, Germany. Busanan Ongbamrungphan of Thailand bested India’s Saina Nehwal and qualified for the year-end event. 

Currently, PV Sindhu is the only Indian woman listed for the season-ending BWF World Tour Finals scheduled to take place in Guangzhou on 14-18 December 2022. 

PV Sindhu won the World Tour Finals in 2019 and received silver in 2021. Besides Saina Nehwal, players like Wang Zhiyi and former Olympic champion Carolina Marin are about to miss the prestigious tournament. 

Olympic silver medallist Sindhu is currently fourth in the Race To Guangzhou rankings. Before her training for the same kicked off in Hyderabad, she had opted out of the Commonwealth Games and BWF World Championships due to an injury.

Reigning Olympic champion Chen Yufei is at the top of the list. In addition, her compatriot He Bingjiao, known for her heroics at the BWF world tour's European leg, will join the top-ranked shuttler.

He Bingjiao won the Denmark Open and French Open in October. In the Indian men's badminton squad, men's singles shuttler H.S. Prannoy ranked second on the Race to Guangzhou rankings, has earned his ticket to the event.

He will face tough competition from Olympic and world champion Viktor Axelsen, Chinese Taipei's Chou Tien Chen, and Jonathan Christie of Indonesia. 

Hylo Open semi-finalist Kidambi Srikanth will not qualify; Lakshya Sen is out of the Race

The world's number 10 Lakshya Sen and 12th-ranked Kimdabi Srikanth, have slim chances. The latter made a fine run in the Hylo Open, a tune-up event to the season-end extravaganza.

He advanced to the semi-finals, where Indonesian player Anthony Ginting bested him in straight games. In men's doubles, India's top-ranked dynamic duo in the Race - Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty - needed to win the Hylo Open and Australian Open to advance to the Tour Finals. 

However, they lost to England's Ben Lane and Sean Vendy in the quarterfinals, which killed their hopes of making it to the event. Four pairs have been confirmed in men's doubles: Indonesia's Fajar Alfian-Muhammad Adrinato and Mohammad Ahsan-Hendra Setiawan; Malaysia's Ong Yew Yin-Teo E Yi and Aaron Chia-Soh Woo Yik.

In women's doubles, Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly were in contention for a spot in the event. However, the 16th-ranked pairing couldn't pull through.