Lakshya Sen beats Alwi Farhan in three games to reach the Kumamoto Masters final

Lakshya Sen is through to the Kumamoto Masters Japan final. The Indian eighth seed beat Indonesia’s Alwi Farhan, seeded sixth, 21-12, 15-21, 21-11 in 70 minutes in the semi-finals on Saturday, 14 November, his first win over a player who had beaten him in both of their earlier meetings. He plays for the title at the BWF Super 500 event on Sunday, 15 November.

The match was second on Court 1 at the Kumamoto Prefectural Gymnasium, according to the official BWF results. Lakshya took the first game 21-12, lost the second 15-21 and closed out the decider 21-11. He was the only Indian in any of the 10 semi-finals across the five events.

A first win over Farhan

Farhan first beat him in the Macau Open semi-finals on 2 August 2025, winning 21-16, 21-9 in 39 minutes. They met again in the opening round of the Indonesia Open in Jakarta on 2 June 2026, and the Indonesian came through 21-19, 21-16 in 48 minutes. Over those four games, BWF’s head-to-head record has Lakshya scoring 60 points to Farhan’s 84.

Farhan also sits higher in the rankings. He is world No. 10 and Lakshya No. 13. In the HSBC Race to Guangzhou, the World Tour standings used to decide qualification for the season-ending World Tour Finals, Farhan is fourth and Lakshya 12th. The Indonesian has won 44 of his 60 matches in 2026; Lakshya has 27 wins and 19 defeats.

Before the semi-final, Lakshya had not dropped a game in Kumamoto. He beat Chi Yu Jen 21-19, 21-18, Dong Tianyao 21-8, 21-14 and home player Yushi Tanaka 21-16, 21-15. Farhan needed three games against Kenta Nishimoto in the round of 16, losing the second 6-21 before taking the decider 21-11, and then beat his compatriot Moh. Zaki Ubaidillah 21-17, 21-12 in the quarter-finals.

What a final place is worth

The tournament carries USD 500,000 in prize money. Under BWF’s distribution table for Super 500 events, each losing men’s singles semi-finalist receives 1.45 per cent of it, or $7,250, along with 6,420 world ranking points. A place in the final lifts that to at least $19,000 and 7,800 points. The champion takes $37,500 and 9,200 points.

Lakshya’s opponent in the final is Japan’s unseeded Koki Watanabe, who beat Thailand’s second seed Kunlavut Vitidsarn 14-21, 21-11, 23-21 in the other semi-final on Saturday, according to the official BWF results. Watanabe had knocked out Kidambi Srikanth in the quarter-finals. Viktor Axelsen won the men’s title in Kumamoto in 2023, Li Shi Feng in 2024 and Kodai Naraoka in 2025. The 2026 final is on Sunday, 15 November.