Rising Indian shuttler Lakshya Sen stunned second seed Victor Svendsen of Denmark in straight games to clinch the men’s singles title at the Belgian International Challenge in Leuven. Lakshya notched up a comfortable 21-14, 21-15 win over Svendsen in the title clash that lasted for 34 minutes. Earlier, the 18-year-old from Almora had beaten Denmark’s Kim Bruun 21-18, 21-11 to win the semifinal clash.
The semifinal clash was a close affair initially with Lakshya and Bruun exchanging leads frequently before the Danish shuttler jumped to a 11-9 advantage at the break. However, Lakshya erased the deficit after the interval and build on a slender 13-12 lead to slowly move ahead and eventually pocketed the opening game comfortably.
Lakshya came out with all cylinders blazing in the second game to jump to a 6-2 lead early on and then reeled off five straight points to grab a 11-3 lead at the breather. The Indian produced another burst of five straight points to create a huge gap which Bruun failed to bridge.
