Marin suffers comeback defeat at Vietnam Open
The Spaniard was making her first appearance after an eight-month layoff.
Reigning Olympic gold medallist Carolina Marin suffered an opening round defeat on her return to badminton after eight months, as she went down in straight games to Supanida Katethong at the Vietnam Open.
Marin got off to a fast start against her Thai opponent, opening up a 10-5 lead in the opening game.
However, Katethong - ranked number 55 in the world - gradually hauled back the deficit as Marin's unforced error count began to accumulate.
The Thai shuttler took the first game 24-22 and kept up the pressure to win the second by a 22-20 margin and curtail Marin's comeback in Ho Chi Minh city.
21-year-old Katethong now faces Indonesian Yulia Yosephin Susanto in the second round.
Marin, on the other hand, will now turn her attention towards the China Open later in the month.
Indian shuttlers in action
It was another day of mixed fortunes for the Indian badminton contingent as only Siril Verma and the men’s doubles pair of Sanyam Shukla and Arun George emerged on the victorious side.
Playing in one of the first games of the day, Verma was thoroughly dominant as he dismantled his Malaysian opponent Iskandar Zulkarnain 21-18, 21-7 to cruise to the next round.
The 19-year-old now faces a daunting task in the next round as he has been paired against top seed Daren Liew.
India's Sourabh Verma and Subhankar Dey - seeded two and three respectively in the men's singles - will both enter the competition on Thursday after being given opening round byes.
Shukla and George too made light work of their Malaysian opponents, needing only 22 minutes to wrap up the game 21-14, 21-14.
Top seeded Chinese Taipei pair of Yang Po-Han and Lu Ching-Yao now lie in wait for them.
All other India shuttlers including Riya Mookerjee, Sai Uttejitha Rao, Siddharth Pratap Singh and Vrushali Gummadi lost their first-round matches, with only Pratap Singh managing to win a game amongst them.