SINGAPORE - The Republic's men's and women's doubles petanque have both been eliminated after the preliminaries on Thursday morning and failed to advance to the semi-finals.
At the Padang, the men's combination of Cheng Zhi Ming and Goh Wee Teck faced Vietnam but the Vietnamese duo consisted of men's singles bronze medallist Ngo Ron and mixed doubles silver medallist Tran Thach Lam proved too strong.
Vietnam took the early lead 5-2 and forced Singapore on the defensive. All Singapore could do was to expend their boules in a bid to deny their opponents while the Vietnamese focused on getting as close to the jack as possible, eventually winning 13-3.
In the earlier matches played on Wednesday, the Singapore pair beat Cambodia (13-0), Myanmar (13-0) and Brunei (13-4) but faltered against Malaysia (2-13), Laos (4-13) and Thailand (9-13).
Vietnam will meet Malaysia in the semi-finals.
"Playing wise, we could have played better," Cheng said. "We played up to 80 per cent of our standard. The other 20 per cent was not so well and we think this is because of the home ground pressure and trying to cope with it. But we will do better in the next few days."
The women's doubles of Vicki Heo and Janice Tan saw their playing time end when they lost against Myanmar today 13-0. The Singaporeans managed to only get one win out of seven against the Philippines yesterday, where they won narrowly 11-10.
Cheng and Goh will team up once again tomorrow with 14-year-old Sheryl Sim in the mixed triples where they hope to advance to the semi-finals that will be played on Saturday.
