Stare Jablonki, Poland, July 5, 2013 – Phil Dalhausser and Sean Rosenthal kept up their quest to win the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships Mazury 2013 when they beat their fellow Americans Jacob Gibb and Casey Patterson 2-0 (23-21, 21-16) on Friday.
The sides pushed each other hard in the first set, but in the second Dalhausser and Rosenthal managed to take control and then kept Gibb and Patterson at arm’s length to close out the win.
“We would have preferred to have played them in the semifinal or the final, but we didn’t get a good Independence Day present with the draw,” Dalhausser said.
“It was a tight match for us and we had a lot of luck because those guys played well. Jake and Casey made a few mistakes in the second set which made things easier for us.”
Dalhausser and Rosenthal came into the World Championships having won two golds this season, at the Fuzhou Open, and the Rome Grand Slam on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour.
Dalhausser has an enviable record at Stare Jablonki having won two gold medals and silver at the past three Grand Slams at the venue and he has further success in his sights this year.
“Our goal was always the gold, but we’ve got Ricardo (Santos and partner Alvaro Filho) in the next round and we’ll have to take it match by match.”
Brazilians break Polish hearts
Pedro Salgado and Bruno Oscar Schmidt silenced a capacity 9,000 centre court crowd when they knocked out Poland’s leading side, Grzegorz Fijalek and Mariusz Prudel with a 2-0 (21-17, 21-16) victory.
The Brazilians had not been in the best form during the tournament and lost two of their three pool matches. However, against the previously unbeaten Polish duo they rediscovered the form that has won them one set of gold medals, a silver and bronze on the World Tour this year.
“We got our heads back on, it happens,” Pedro said. “We were favourites in our pool and everyone played really, really good against us and we didn’t play our best, but that happens and this is the tournament. We are still in and it is now another tournament when the playoffs start.”
It was a disappointing end to Fijalek and Prudel’s hopes of home victory as they were unable to find their rhythm against a pair who had clicked into life.
“The match was hard,” Fijalek said. “We weren’t able to be at our best and Brazil were much better and played very good tactics. They also didn’t give us any chances to attack.”
Lion King roars again
Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins continued their quiet progress in the tournament with a 2-0 (22-20, 27-25) win over Sebastian Dollinger and Stefan Windscheif.
The Latvians' form fluctuated wildly in both sets and whenever it appeared as though they had done enough to take the initiative, the German duo fought back. However, when the crunch came in both sets Samoilovs and Smedins managed to hold their nerve.
“In a match like this one mistake at the end is crucial,” Samoilovs said, “but we said to each other ‘calm down, don’t stress, concentrate on each ball and keep going’. Actually this year we had a lot of matches like this, we are leading and then our opponents close in but we win in the end.
“They are a real good team. It’s a mystery because the last six tournaments we played each other five times and four of them went into a tiebreak.”
Bockermann and Urbatzka; the history boys
History was made when Markus Bockermann and Mischa Urbatzka beat Alexey Sidorenko and Alexandr Dyachenko with a record score for a two-set World Tour match.
The Germans beat the Kazakhstan pair 29-27, 35-33 in 55 minutes and their reward for reaching the last 16 in historic style is a match against defending champions Emanuel Rego and Alison Cerutti.