News Beach volleyball 24/04/2014 Emanuel and Pedro progress to knock out stage at FIVB Beach Volleyball Fuzhou Open Fuzhou, China, April 24, 2014 – 2012 Olympic silver medallistEmanuel Rego and new partner Pedro Solberg Salgado from Brazil finished top inPool D of the FIVB Beach Volleyball Fuzhou Open after defeating AlexanderBrouwer and Michiel van Dorsten of the Netherlands in straight sets 2-0 (21-16,21-15) on Thursday.Emanuel and Pedro, who are playing their first seasontogether, were the only team in the Main Draw that did not drop a set afterthree pool games, and progressed to the second round of single elimination onFriday.The Brazilian pair, seeded fourth at theseason-opening tournament, led most of the first set against Brouwer and vanDorsten, winning it when van Dorsten served into the net.Emanuel and Pedro set the pace in the second set aswell, building a 5-1 lead. But Brouwer and van Dorsten kept the pressure ontheir rivals with strong serving and fought back to level at 11-11. Emanuel andPedro recovered just at the right moment to pull away again before sealing thevictory on their second match point."I'm really happy because we played at our besttoday. Yesterday we had a tough day and we didn't play 100 percent, because mybody was not ready yet since we arrived here only the day beforeyesterday," said Pedro.For Emanuel, the Fuzhou Open is a build-up to the longseason, which includes 11 Open events, 10 Grand Slam events, a new Grand SlamFinal."We're just starting as a team. We're improving.I think, this is the best part of this match. We play better at every match tocreate a consistent team. That is our focus," said Emanuel, who won silverwith Alison Cerutti in the London Olympics in 2012.Meanwhile, defending champions Philip Dalhausser andSean Rosenthal from the USA shrugged off Wednesday's shock defeat by Latvia'sMartins Plavins and Aleksandrs Solovejs to beat Sebastian Chevallier and AlexeiPrawdzic of Switzerland 2-0 (21-18, 25-23) in their third Pool B match. "That's good to get another win. It's the firsttournament of the year, we're getting better and better," said Rosenthal.The American tandem will have to play in the firstround of single elimination. Also heading into the second round of the knockoutphase are two pairs each from Brazil (Ricardo Alex Santos/Alvaro Morais Filho,Alison Cerutti/Bruno Oscar Schmidt) and Latvia (Aleksandrs Samoilovs/JanisSmedins, Plavins/Solovejs), along with Salvetti/Daguerre of France, NicolaiPaolo/Daniele Lupo of Italy and Sam Pedlow/Grant O'Gorman of Canada. Fuzhou, capital of the Fujian province lies on thesoutheast coast of Chinese mainland and hosts the Open event for the second straightyear. In addition to the Fuzhou Open, two other stops arescheduled in China in 2014 on the FIVB international schedule: the FIVBShanghai Grand Slam (April 29 to May 4) and the FIVB Xiamen Open (October 7 to12). All three are double-gender events.FuzhouOpen Tournament Page FuzhouOpen Tournament Notes 2014 Beach Volleyball Media Guide Print this Page News {{item.LocalShortDate}} {{item.Title}} All the News