After the euphoria of singles gold and silver, it was back down to earth for the New Zealand squash team when the doubles and mixed doubles began today.
Women’s singles gold medal winner Joelle King teamed with Amanda Landers-Murphy, reuniting their world champion pairing. In a boilover, they lost their first pool match in women’s doubles to the ninth-seeded Malaysian pair of Rachel Arnold and Sivasangari Subramaniam 11-10, 11-10.
“It’s quite a change from singles to doubles,” King said. “It’s not over yet. We traditionally start slow as a pair but come back strong.”
Landers-Murphy had only 10 minutes’ rest before teaming with Zac Millar in mixed pool play against the experienced English pair of Jenny Duncalf and Adrian Waller.
The English roared through the first game 11-5, dropped the second 11-0, then eased through the third 11-15.
Landers-Murphy and Millar later outplayed the Malta pairing of Colette Sultana and Daniel Zammit-Lewis 11-6, 11-6.
In further mixed play King and Paul Coll, the current world champions and top seeds, took just 10 minutes to destroy the Papua New Guinea pairing of Lynette Vai and Madako Junior Suari 10-4, 10-7.
In the final match of the day, Coll and Campbell Grayson accounted for Jason Doyle and Jules Snagg from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 11-4, 11-2 in 15 minutes.