Tanvi Sharma, 17, wins Taipei Open Super 300 title
Tanvi Sharma defeated Nguyen Thuy Linh 21-16, 21-16 in the final to win the Taipei Open BWF World Tour Super 300 title in Taipei on August 04, 2026, becoming the tournament’s youngest champion at 17 years and 222 days. She removed her gold medal and placed it around coach Park Tae-sang’s neck after lifting her maiden Super 300 trophy.
Tai Tzu-ying previously held the mark for youth, having won the Taipei title at 18 years and 85 days, and the comparison framed Tanvi’s week in the Taiwanese capital. Observers of the event noted Tanvi’s timing, late deception and ease of shot-making as defining features of her play, traits that emerged consistently through the tournament. Indian badminton has been searching for the next leading woman since Saina Nehwal and P.V. Sindhu transformed the sport in the country, and Taipei provided an early view of the identity Tanvi might develop.
Tanvi opened her campaign with a 21-16, 22-20 victory over compatriot Tasnim Mir and then beat Indonesia’s Titis Rahayu Widyawan 21-17, 22-20 in the second round, with both second games going down to the wire. Against those opponents she maintained an attacking approach despite tight scorelines, refusing to alter her instincts as the matches tightened. The pattern of close finishes in second games underlined her capacity to sustain pressure in decisive moments.
Her quarterfinal required three games, a 21-15, 18-21, 21-14 win over fourth seed Supanida Katethong of Thailand. In the semifinal she beat local favourite Huang Yu-Hsun 21-17, 21-11; Huang was ranked 10 places above Tanvi. Tanvi’s deceptive pushes to the back line, cross-court smashes and forecourt play repeatedly unsettled Huang, with a brief wobble late in the opening game proving only a temporary interruption.
In the final against Nguyen, Tanvi concealed drops with the same action as her smash to open the court and raced to a 10-2 lead in the first game. Nguyen closed to 10-8 after a run of unforced errors by Tanvi, but Tanvi steadied to take the opening game 21-16. In the second game she trailed 0-3 before moving to 8-4 and later 15-8, and she closed out the match 21-16 by producing quality at crucial junctures.
Tanvi commented on her nerves and approach, saying, “I was quite nervous, but I just thought I would give my 100 percent.” On the title she added, “I’m very happy to win this title. I didn’t expect to win a title here. I just thought I’d give my best. So I was going step by step, match by match.” Coach Park Tae-sang, who has worked on adding focus to her explosive strokeplay, revealed there had been moments when he had wondered whether he should leave India, but said Tanvi’s victory had given him “another powerful source of motivation to keep moving forward” after more than four years without a title.
The triumph places Tanvi among the Indian women who have won a BWF World Tour Super 300 title, joining Saina Nehwal, P.V. Sindhu and Devika Sihag. Sindhu congratulated Tanvi on social media, writing that the teenager had “all the ingredients to become a very special player”, praising her talent, stroke-making and courage to take on the best, and calling the Taipei triumph “just the beginning” while noting that stability and experience were the remaining pieces.
Tanvi’s Taipei title follows a record of junior and senior achievements: she is a former World Junior No. 1 and became the first Indian to win two medals at a single edition of the World Junior Championships, claiming silver in girls’ singles and bronze in the mixed team event, and she had earlier reached the final of the U.S. Open Super 300 last year, finished runner-up at the Odisha Masters and Guwahati Masters, and was part of India’s Asian Team Championships triumph. The victory arrives as the BWF World Championships in New Delhi are scheduled for later this month, and Tanvi said she still needed to “work harder” to compete regularly at the Super 500 and Super 750 level.
