Ace Indian shuttler PV Sindhu had to toil hard even as Kidambi Srikanth and HS Prannoy scored easy victories to progress to the second round of their respective events at the Japan Open, on Tuesday. Third seed Sindhu had to sweat it out for 53 minutes before prevailing 21-17 7-21 21-13 over unseeded local girl Sayaka Takahashi in her women's singles opening round.

Sindhu will next play Chinese Fangjie Gao, who defeated the other Indian in fray Jakka Vaishnavi Reddy 21-10 21-8. Having finished second-best yet again with a historic silver in the Asian Games, Olympic medallist Sindhu would be desperate to break the final jinx here. Sindhu has been outstanding with silver medals in all the major events this year -- the Commonwealth Games, the World Championship and the Asian Games but the gold has been eluding the Indian for a while now.