Malta won its two opening matches in the teams competition yesterday, first beating the strong Iceland 3-0 and later repeating the doze against Andorra.

In the opening match, Andrzej Makowski won his match against Iceland’s No. 2 3-0, playing well from start to finish and never giving his opponent a chance to get anywhere close enough to threaten his win.

In the second match, Simon Gerada faced Iceland’s No. 1 who is also the top seed in these Games. The fiery Gerada had a mixed start as the Iceland player won some lucky balls, but after being 8-4 down, Gerada fought back admirably to level at 10-10 and then went on to win the next two points to clinch the set on 12-10.

The opening victory gave Gerada the confidence he needed to complete his mission. In fact, helped also by some unforced errors from his opponent, he clinched his win and the second for Malta in just a few minutes.

Iceland had to win the doubles to remain with a chance to win the match and they appeared heading for an easy win when they won the first two sets 11-4. But Malta fought their way back into the game by winning the third set. They also clinched the second set to level it at two-all, leaving the final set for the decider. It was close till the very end, but the Maltese duo prevailed 11-9 at the end to clinch the first win for Malta.

In the afternoon, Malta completed their qualifying round commitments with another impressive 3-0, this time over Andorra. The win enabled Malta to top Group A.

In the women’s team competition, Malta’s Johanna Grech and Yu Whang lost 3-0 to the favourites Luxembourg. Today they face Monaco in an important match which will decide the second team to reach the semi-finals from their group.