Glasgow: Malaysian star Nicol David’s attempt to win a second squash gold medal at the Commonwealth Games got off to a winning start on Tuesday with victory in the women’s doubles.
The world number one, who retained her singles title with a win over Laura Massaro on Monday, paired up with Low Wee Wern to overcome New Zealand’s Megan Craig and Kylie Lindsay in Glasgow.
Despite David’s domination of a sport in which she has been the world’s top-ranked player since 2006, her and Low are fourth seeds for the doubles competition and they had a tough battle with Craig and Lindsay.
After losing the first game 11-7 in their opening Pool D contest, they were 5-0 down in the second before coming back to win 11-10 and they completed their victory with an 11-6 win in the third.
Their two remaining matches of the pool phase take place on Wednesday. David and Low hope to improve, having concentrated on singles since the Tri Nations — where they had another narrow win over the Kiwi pair — in May.
“It’s a bit too far [to think about medals]. We’re just hoping to play well in the pool matches,” said David.
“We played well at the end and got things together and hopefully it gets better each day. It’s like playing the opposite of what you do in the singles, but the partnership is about communication.
“Once we got a bit more of an understanding of the feel and what we’re there to do, we felt the space and the court a bit better, and we had the confidence to take some shots on.”
‘Firing on all cylinders’
English top seeds Massaro and Jenny Duncalf, silver medallists four years ago, opened with a 2-0 win over Papua New Guinea’s Eli Webb and Lynette Vai.
There was also a win for Australian second seeds Rachael Grinham and Kasey Brown.
In the men’s competition, England’s Nick Matthew, winner of the singles on Monday, and Adrian Grant started their campaign with 2-0 wins over Maltese duo Bradley Hindle and Daniel Zammit-Lewis and Guyana’s Alexander Arjoon and Sunil Seth.
“I’m not expecting too much of myself the first couple of days,” said Matthew.
“Adrian’s going to be the leader on the court, and hopefully then when it gets into the knockout stages we’ll be firing on all cylinders, ready to go.”
Second-seeded Australians Cameron Pilley and David Palmer — who is 38 and has come out of retirement in an attempt to win gold — picked up two victories as well.
Fellow Australians Matthew Karwalski, who was brought into the team as a replacement for Zac Alexander due to a Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling, and Ryan Cuskelly also started with two wins.
There was a surprise when Wales pair David Evans and Peter Creed beat Indians Saurav Ghosal — who reached the semi-finals in the singles — and Harinder Pal Sandhu 11-8, 11-3.
Brown and Pilley, winners in Delhi four years ago, are the top seeds in the mixed doubles and they started the defence of their title with a 2-0 win over Arjoon and Nicolette Fernandes.
