BADMINTON - Battling Seguin's a Bjorn winner

Waikato's Bjorn Seguin continued to move up the Badminton New Zealand rankings with a straight-sets victory over Southland's James Eunson in the final of the Big Frog Northland/North Island Open.
The 19-year-old said his success in Whangarei has come hard on the heels of two other big wins and were the result of off-season work with his new coach, Luis Suarez.
"Luis has made me improve physically and that's been the difference, he's been tough on me physically and that's where I was struggling before," he said.
Seguin has been training hard to improve his game and his recent success has him looking ahead towards selection for next year's Commonwealth Games in India.
"I'm aiming to try to qualify for the Commonwealth Games but at the moment I still need to get my citizenship sorted out," he said.
US-born Seguin is also a French citizen but although he has lived in the Waikato for six years, he has never taken out New Zealand citizenship.
His recent success will see him spend more time in correspondence with the Immigration department especially since he is now the second-ranked male player in the country after Joe Wu.
Three weeks ago he was considered an outside chance to be picked for India, but with wins in the national U23 championships, the North Harbour Open and now the North Island Open, he is riding high. Seguin was clearly the better player in Saturday's opening set, winning 21-14.
But Eunson fought back in the second set and suceeded inruffling the Waikato player, who was forced to dig deep before re-establishing his dominance and closing out the match 21-17.
The talented teenager also won the doubles at the event, teaming with fellow Waikato player, Michael Fowke to defeat Eunson and Auckland's Ashraf Dhoray.
Malaysian-born, Wellington-resident Jian de Chew celebrated his 29th birthday by teaming up with Southland's Anna Rankin to defeat Eunson and Auckland Stephanie Cheng in the final of the mixed doubles.
Earlier the pair had extinguished Northland's final remaining hopes for a title by beating Dean Nuttal and his sister Michelle 21-16 21-13.
Dean, now North Harbour-based, was beaten by Seguin in the semifinal of the singles on Friday evening.
The women's singles was a reverse of the New Zealand under-23 final with Auckland's Clare Chapple showing plenty of resolve to come from a game down to defeat Rankin 14-21 21-18 21-18.
Emma Chapple and Stephanie Cheng took three games to overcome the young pair of Kritteka Gregory and Mary O'Connor from Waitakere in the women's doubles title.