Badminton: Robertson and Jenkins out of women's doubles

9.40am

MANCHESTER - New Zealand's Rhona Robertson and Tammy Jenkins, who won the women's doubles bronze medal at Kuala Lumpur four years ago, were tossed out of the doubles in their first match at the Commonwealth Games today.

Experienced internationals Gail Emms and Jo Goode, of England, beat the second seeded New Zealanders 1-7 8-7 6-8 2-7 women's doubles bronze. Emms and Goode are not seeded for the Games competition as they have not picked up enough recent ranking points.

New Zealand badminton team manager Grant Stone said Robertson and Jenkins played extremely well.

"They had a couple of set points in the third set which would have made it two sets each if they'd finished them off," he said.

New Zealand's other women's doubles combination, third-seeded Sara Runesten Petersen and Nicole Gordon made the quarterfinals with an easy 7-2 7-0 7-0 win over Jersey's Solenn Pasturel and Lucy Burns.

New Zealand's Nick Hall and Geoff Bellingham both reached the quarterfinals of the men's singles.

Sixth seeded Hall beat England's No 2 player Mark Constable, the No 11 seed, 8-6 4-7 8-6 7-1 in their fourth round clash.

"Nick played exceedingly well and didn't give Constable a chance to get into the game, he was just very consistent," Stone said.

Fifth seeded Bellingham made no race of his fourth round clash against Miluka Karunaratne of Sri Lanka 7-3 7-3 7-1.

Stone said Bellingham "ran him off the court".

New Zealand's other entry in the men's singles, John Gordon, was up against No 1 seed Choong Hann Wong of Malaysia and crashed out 0-7 2-7 2-7.

Nicole Gordon was beaten by Canada's Denyse Julien in four sets in the women's singles to end New Zealand's participation in that competition.

In the men's doubles John Gordon and Dan Shirley scored two straight sets victories today to progress to their quarterfinals, but Bellingham and Chris Blair exited after one win.

- NZPA

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