The Hague, the Netherlands, July 3, 2014 – Dutch pair Marleen van Iersel and Madelein Meppelink may be preparing to welcome the world to their home nation at the Transavia Grand Slam, but they are also aiming to show their compatriots what beach volleyball is all about.
The Transavia Grand Slam will take place from July 15-20 and is the sixth Grand Slam on the 2014 World Tour calendar. With a purse of $1,000,000 and three venues spread across the country, the tournament will give everyone on the Tour a taste of what is to come when it hosts the 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships.
The Hague Beach Stadium in Scheveningen will once again be the main site, as it will be in 2015, but there will also be venues in Amsterdam and Apeldoorn.
“We both love playing in front of our home crowd,” van Iersel said. “For the development of beach volleyball and the awareness it creates for the Dutch people about the greatness of this sport, it is really important to have more locations.
“The Dam Square in Amsterdam will be great location to showcase our sport in our country’s biggest city.”
Van Iersel and Meppelink are likely to be among the leading contenders for women’s gold. The pair only teamed up at the start of 2014, but have already won their first World Tour medals with bronze at the Moscow Grand Slam and also claimed the CEV European Championships title.
The Transavia Grand Slam is the second of four straight Grand Slams. A week earlier the players head up the Swiss Alps to the Gstaad Grand Slam and following the week in the Netherlands there is the Long Beach Grand Slam in Los Angeles and then the Klagenfurt Grand Slam in Austria.
For Van Iersel, her main goal now is “a great performance in the Transavia Grand Slam. But, we want to play every tournament to the best of our abilities and to play as many games as possible.”