French Open 2024 badminton: Chirag Shetty-Satwiksairaj Rankireddy win first title of the year

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty clinched the French Open 2024 badminton men’s doubles title with a win over Chinese Taipei’s Lee Jhe-Huei and Yang Po-Hsuan in the final on Sunday.

Playing at the Arena Porte de la Chapelle, the venue for badminton at the Paris 2024 Olympics, the top-ranked Indian badminton pair beat their world No. 16 opponents with a scoreline of 21-11, 21-17 in 36 minutes.

This was the first title of the 2024 badminton season for Chirag-Satwik and the duo’s second French Open title. The Indian pair won the French Open in 2022 and were runners-up in 2019.

Lee Jhe-Huei and Yang Po-Hsuan displayed quick reflexes at the start of the match. However, Chirag and Satwik, the taller of the two pairs, used their height and powerful smashes to lead 11-5 at the mid-game interval and built upon it to pocket the first game.

The Chinese Taipei shuttlers improved their intensity in the second game and won the early exchanges to lead 4-1. Nevertheless, service errors and misjudgments at the backline from Lee Jhe-Huei and Yang Po-Hsuan allowed Chirag and Satwik to secure the contest with a comfortable margin.

“The key was to be steady,” Chirag said. “They can be quite a formidable pair. They play some really attacking badminton.

“So you need to keep your calm and keep at it and not really think that ‘oh if I lift it, they'll smash back at me.’

“We were ready for that. We knew that they would come all guns blazing. But we had to stick to our plan and that's what we did,” Chirag explained.

This was Satwik and Chirag’s seventh title on the BWF World Tour. The Indian pair bagged the Swiss Open, the Indonesia Open and the Korea Open last year.

Chirag-Satwik competed in their third straight final on the BWF World Tour this year. They suffered setbacks in the Malaysia Open and India Open finals before winning the French Open.

In the earlier rounds at the French Open, Chirag-Satwik defeated world championships bronze medallists Ong Yew Sin and Teo Ee Yi of Malaysia in their opening match and reigning world champions Kang Min Hyuk and Seo Seung Jae of the Republic of Korea in the semi-finals.

The Indian shuttlers did not drop a single game at the French Open, which also served as a Paris 2024 Olympic test event.

Results at the French Open, a BWF Super 750 event, also counted towards players’ qualifying rankings for the Paris 2024 Olympics. The qualification window for badminton started on May 1 this year and will end in April.

"Well, yeah, obviously the Olympics is by far the biggest event on the calendar,” Chirag said. “Everybody wants to do well at the Olympics and so do we.

“And I am happy… It's a phenomenal venue. The crowd is amazing. So we are really looking forward to the Paris Olympics later this year,” he added.

The next assignment for top-tier Indian badminton players will be the All England Open BWF Super 1000 badminton tournament starting on Tuesday. Orleans Masters, a BWF Super 300 event, also gets underway next week.