Thailand Open 2025: Tharun Mannepalli enters main draw; Kidambi Srikanth, Ayush Shetty exit

India's Tharun Mannepalli made his way into the men's singles main draw of the 2025 Thailand Open Super 500, with a straight games win over counterpart Kidambi Srikanth on Tuesday.

The 23-year-old Tharun took down the former world No 1 21-16, 21-19 in 40 minutes in their qualification quarter-final clash.

On the back of this win, Tharun joins Lakshya Sen and Priyanshu Rajawat, who will start their Thailand Open campaign in the main draw on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, Tharun had started his qualification round campaign with a hard fought 17-21, 21-19, 21-17 win over Chinese Taipei Kuo Kuan Lin in a contest which lasted an hour and 13 minutes after being a game down.

The win over Lin helped Tharun set up a qualification quarter-final clash against Srikanth.

Unfortunately for India, Tharun was the only shuttler from the country who made it out of the qualification rounds.

Srikanth, who had beaten fellow Indian Sankar Subramanian 21-15, 21-17 in straight games in the first qualification round, bowed out after a loss to Tharun.

Ayush Shetty went out in the qualification quarter-final, losing 14-21, 20-22 to Justin Hoh of Malaysia. He had started his campaign with a thumping 21-10, 21-11 win over Joakim Oldorff of Finland.

Ira Sharma, in women's singles, also had her campaign cut short in the qualification quarter-final as she went down 12-21, 18-21 to local star Thamonwan Nithiittikrai.

The mixed doubles shuttlers Mohit Jaglan-Lakshita Jaglan as well as men's singles star Sathish Kumar Karunakaran lost out their first qualification round matches for an early exit.