Lucerne, Switzerland, May 12, 2015 - Seven of the eight seeded beach volleyball pairs in the inaugural FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Lucerne Open 2015 won as predicted here Tuesday as the 32-team qualification tournament for this week’s FIVB World Tour stop was held on the Lake Lucerne Lido courts.
Led by two teams from Beach Volleyball power Brazil, the eight qualifying pairs will join 24 other tandems for Wednesday’s opening two rounds of pool play with the first matches scheduled to start at 8 a.m. (local time). In addition to the South American teams, other women’s tandems earning Main Draw berths Tuesday were from Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Russia and Spain.
Wednesday’s competition schedule will also include 24 men’s Qualification Tournament matches to set the field for Thursday’s opening pool play Main Draw contests. The US$150,000 Lucerne Open is the second event on the 2015 FIVB World Tour as the international circuit played its first match last month in Fuzhou, China.
This week’s double gender FIVB World Tour event is also the second event on the qualifying schedule for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. The gold medal teams in each gender in the Lucerne Open will each split $11,000, the silver $8,000, the bronze $6,000 and fourth place $4,500.
SEED BREAK-THROUGH
The Nystrom (Emilia and Erika) scored the biggest seed-break-through in Tuesday final round of qualifying as the 30-year old Finnish twins posted a 2-1 (12-21, 21-17, 15-10) win in 46 minutes over seventh-seeded Kacie MacTavish and Caleigh Whitaker of Canada. It was the Nystroms second win over a Canadian team Tuesday as the twins ousted 10th-seeded Julie Gordon and Brandie Wilkerson 2-1 (18-21, 25-23, 15-9) in 54 minutes during the morning rounds.
Despite their low seed, the Nystroms are still the most experienced team in the international record book as the Lucerne Open is the pair’s 155th FIVB-sanctioned event together, including 148 on the world tour where the twins have been playing together since 2001 with their first full season being 2003.
BRAZILIANS BETTER
The Brazilian winners of two women’s matches each Tuesday were sixth-seeded Carolina Horta/Liliane Maestrini and eighth-seeded Eduarda Lisboa/Elize Maia. Both pairs ousted teams from the United States in their final qualifying match Tuesday with Carolina and Liliane eliminating 11th-seeded Caitlin Ledoux and Irene Hester Pollock 2-0 (21-12, 21-17) in 33 minutes.
The 16-year old Eduarda and her 30-year old partner Elize scored a 2-0 (21-16, 23-21) win in 38 minutes over ninth-seeded Brittany Hochevar and Heather McGuire to advance to the Main Draw. Eduarda is a two-time junior world champion and captured the gold medal at the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games in China.
WINNING AS EXPECTED
Other pairs advancing were top-seeded Victoria Bieneck/Julia Grossner of Germany, second-seeded Yulia Abalakina/Ksenia Dabizha of Russia, third-seeded Angela Lobato/Paula Soria of Spain, fourth-seeded Victoria Kjolberg/Janne Kongshavn of Norway, fifth-seeded Tatyana Mashkova/Irina Tsimbalova of Kazakhstan,
ON THE HORIZON
Following this week’s play in Switzerland, the men take a week off while the women proceed to the Czech Republic for the US$75,000 Prague Open May 20-24. The men rejoin the women on the international circuit in Moscow May 26-31 for the first of five grand slam stops on the 2015 FIVB World Tour calendar.