India leaves Asian Games 2026 without a tennis medal after Nagal loss

Sumit Nagal walked off the court in Aichi-Nagoya on Thursday after losing 6-4, 6-4 to China’s Wu Yibing in the men’s singles quarter-finals at the Asian Games 2026, leaving him as the last Indian player remaining in the draw. With that defeat, India’s tennis campaign ended without a single medal at the Games for the first time since 1986.

India has won 34 tennis medals at the Asian Games across history: 10 gold, 7 silver and 17 bronze, and at the 2022 Hangzhou Games the country took home a gold and a silver. Expectations of continuing that recent return to the podium were not met in Aichi-Nagoya.

Three Indian entries reached the quarterfinal stage at these Games — two men’s doubles pairs and one mixed doubles pair — the round where a single win would have secured a medal, but all three lost. When the final doubles pairing was eliminated, Nagal remained the sole Indian competitor still contesting a singles medal.

The doubles defeats contained narrow margins. Bhambri and Suresh lost 7-6(5), 6-3 after dropping a first-set tiebreak by two points, while top seeds Chandrasekar and Balaji were beaten in a deciding match tiebreak 10-8. The second-seeded mixed pair of Bhambri and Bhosale were defeated 6-3, 6-4.

India’s streak of men’s doubles medals at the Asian Games, unbeaten since 1998, ended this week; the country had won medals in six consecutive editions from 2002 to 2022, including four gold and two silver. That run had its origins with Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi and was extended by subsequent generations.

Nagal entered the tournament ranked No. 249 in the world; his quarter-final opponent Wu is ranked No. 111 and has been as high as No. 54. The pair had met once before, in 2024, when Wu won 6-3, 6-3, and Nagal had beaten Uzbekistan’s Sergey Fomin 6-3, 6-2 to reach the quarters in Aichi-Nagoya.

China’s Wu Yibing, ranked No. 111, beat Sumit Nagal (No. 249) 6-4, 6-4 in the men’s singles quarterfinals in Aichi-Nagoya; that loss represented India’s last chance for a tennis medal at the Asian Games 2026, and the nation finished the competition without a medal in any tennis event.