Lakshya Sen and P. V. Sindhu Won Both Singles Titles at the HYLO Open Super 500 in Saarbrücken on 1 November 2026, Sindhu Without Dropping a Game

Lakshya Sen and P. V. Sindhu each won their singles final at the HYLO Open in Saarbrücken, Germany, on Sunday 1 November 2026. Sen, the seventh seed, beat the defending champion and fourth seed, Indonesia’s Jonatan Christie, 21-17 21-10. Sindhu, the second seed (BWF lists her as Pusarla V. Sindhu), beat Denmark’s eighth seed Line Kjaersfeldt 21-12 21-14. BWF’s match data puts both finals at 39 minutes.

Super 500 is the Badminton World Federation (BWF) rating for the tournament, which carries US$500,000 in prize money. BWF’s podium page gives each winner 9,200 ranking points and each runner-up 7,800. Akashvani News, the news service of All India Radio, also reported that India had won both singles crowns.

Sindhu won five matches without losing a game

Her route, taken from BWF’s day-by-day results, ran through five rounds. She beat the UAE’s Prakriti Bharath 21-10 21-10 in 28 minutes on 28 October, then Rosy Oktavia Pancasari 21-9 21-6 in 26 minutes on 29 October. On 30 October she beat Denmark’s Amalie Schulz 21-12 21-10, a win BWF’s report calls comfortable. Her semifinal on 31 October, against fellow Indian Anmol Kharb, finished 21-13 21-16 in 38 minutes. The final took 39, and the five durations BWF recorded add up to 159 minutes, or 2 hours 39 minutes, for the week.

A week earlier, at the French Open in Paris on 25 October, she had won the first game against the world No. 1, An Se Young, and lost 16-21 21-11 21-12. Saarbrücken was her third final of 2026, BWF says, and her first title since the Japan Open, which she won on 19 July by beating Akane Yamaguchi 21-17 21-17. Her season so far is covered in tuput’s profile of Sindhu.

“There are days when you’re absolutely low, but the team is there to pump you up,” Sindhu said in BWF’s report.

The hall was familiar ground. According to the organisers’ report of 1 November, she spent several weeks training there in 2024, in the build-up to the Paris Olympics, and she told them it felt good to be back.

A Super 500 title, with a date worth checking

The Japan Open report from BWF puts her previous Super 500 title at the Singapore Open in May 2022. ANI’s match report, carried by ThePrint, dates that final to 17 July 2022, when she beat China’s Wang Zhi Yi 21-9 11-21 21-15. The accounts differ on the month. If BWF is right that Singapore was her last Super 500 win before Saarbrücken, the HYLO Open is her first at that level in more than four years. The Japan Open win in between was at Super 750 level.

Sen won from a game down three times

Ranked world No. 14, Sen had gone out in the first round of his last six tournaments, BWF’s report says, and his previous final was the All England in March. On 8 March he lost that final 21-15 22-20 to Lin Chun-Yi of Chinese Taipei, according to ANI in The Tribune. That was his second All England final, after 2022; Prakash Padukone won the title in 1980. The Australian Open on 23 November 2025 had been his last title, a 21-15 21-11 win over Japan’s Yushi Tanaka in 38 minutes.

His opener in Saarbrücken, on 28 October, went to three games: Finland’s Joakim Oldorff took the first, and Sen won 16-21 21-9 21-13 in 61 minutes. The round of 16 on 29 October was all-Indian, and he beat Kiran George 21-15 18-21 21-12. Finland’s Kalle Koljonen won the first game of the quarterfinal on 30 October, and Sen took the next two, 14-21 21-17 21-13 in 66 minutes. That put him in his first semifinal since the All England, as BWF’s report of 31 October notes.

The semifinal, on 31 October, was shorter: France’s Toma Junior Popov, the sixth seed, lost 21-17 21-13 in 41 minutes. In the final, BWF says, he led Christie 18-10 in the first game, watched the Indonesian win seven straight points, and recovered in time to take it 21-17. Sen took the second game 21-10.

Five matches took Sen 261 minutes, or 4 hours 21 minutes, on BWF’s figures. “It’s been quite some time since I’ve won a tournament, so it feels really good to play this well,” Sen said. He was part of the team that won India’s first Thomas Cup, the 2022 final against Indonesia in Bangkok, and this was his first title of 2026.

Three Indian women in the last eight

Indian women filled three of the last eight places. Kharb, a world No. 53 by BWF’s count, beat her compatriot and sixth seed Unnati Hooda 21-17 18-21 21-16 in 68 minutes in the quarterfinal, BWF reported on 31 October. In the round before, the match data shows her losing the first game 11-21 and then beating the third seed, Denmark’s Line Christophersen, 21-18 25-23. The three were Sindhu, Kharb and Hooda, and Kharb went on to meet Sindhu in the semifinal.

What the record says about the “firsts”

Akashvani News reported that Sindhu became the first Indian woman to win the HYLO Open women’s singles title, and that Sen became the first Indian to win two titles at the event. Neither claim appears in BWF’s reports, so both were checked against the organisers’ lists of champions, which cover 1998 to 2025.

The women’s singles column in those lists names no Indian winner. Seven Indian names appear anywhere on them, each once (the pages misprint two nationalities, so the count goes by name): Chetan Anand (men’s singles, 2008), Diju Valiyaveetil and Jwala Gutta (mixed doubles, 2008), Rupesh Kumar and Sanave Thomas (men’s doubles, 2009), Subhankar Dey (men’s singles, 2018) and Sen (men’s singles, 2019). No Indian woman won the singles in those 28 editions, and Sen is the only Indian name who now appears twice, which matches Akashvani’s report for that period. Earlier editions are not on the lists, so the claims are unchecked for them.

Sen’s first win came on 3 November 2019, when the tournament was called the SaarLorLux Open and ranked Super 100. Aged 18 and seeded eighth, he beat China’s Weng Hong Yang 17-21 21-18 21-16 in 59 minutes, according to PTI reports in Scroll and The Tribune.

The Yeosu Victor Korea Open, another Super 500 event, runs from 3 to 8 November 2026 at Jinnam Stadium, according to BWF’s tournament page.