Lucerne, Switzerland, May 13, 2015 - While Tuesday’s women’s qualifier went almost as expected, the men’s preliminary rounds featured 12 seed-break-throughs as eight pairs from Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Poland, Qatar, Russia and the United States advanced from Wednesday’s play to Thursday’s opening pool matches for the men in the inaugural FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Lucerne Open 2015.Being played on the Lake Lucerne Lido courts, the US$150,000 Lucerne Open continues through Sunday when the gold medal matches for both genders will be played. With $19,000 in prize money available for the final matches, the winning teams in each gender will share the $11,000 first-place reward.THURSDAY’S TIME TABLEWednesday’s schedule will start and end with men’s pool play matches while the women will conclude group matches during the middle part of the slate. The top three tandems from each pool for both genders will advance to the 24-team elimination bracket. While the women’s semi-finals will be played Saturday, the men’s “final four” matches will be staged Sunday.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. MEN’S MAIN DRAW QUALIFIERSOnly top-seeded Maciej Kosiak/Maciej Rudol and second-seeded Aliaksandr Dziadkou/Aliaksandr Kavalenka of Belarus survived Wednesday’s barrage of seek-break-throughs. The Polish pair advanced with wins over teams from The Netherlands and Denmark while Dziadkou and Kavalenka ousted tandems from France and Italy.In their final match Wednesday, Kosiak and Rudol rallied from a 21-9 first set defeat to win the final two sets (21-15 and 15-12) over 16th-seeded Kristoffer Abell and Peter Kildegaard of Denmark to capture the 50-minute match.Making it through the 32-team qualifier despite a lower placement in the preliminary rounds were 10th-seeded Daniel Dearing/Garrett May of Canada, 13th-seeded Marco Caminati/Alex Ranghieri of Italy, 22nd-seeded Dmitri Barsouk and Yaroslav Koshkarev, 25th-seeded Jefferson Santos Pereira/Cherif Younousse of Qatar, 28th-seeded Hudson Bates/Derek Olson of the United States and 30th-seeded Andre Loyola/Vinicius Rezende of Brazil.3-0The pairs of Bates/Olson and Andre/Vinicius are now 3-0 in the competition after winning American and Brazilian country quota matches Tuesday, respectively. While the Americans have previous FIVB Main Draw experience with other partners, both Andre and Vinicius are both competing in their first FIVB World Tour tournament.INTERESTING MATCHWednesday’s most interesting qualifying match was between Brazil and Russia. Barsouk and Koshkarev defeated 27th-seeded Marcio Araujo and Saymon Barbosa 21-19 and 21-16 in 39 minutes as the match featured two Olympians. Marcio Araujo was a 2005 FIVB Beach Volleyball World champion and silver medalist at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. A 2008 Olympian, Barsouk won the silver medal at the 2007 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships in Gstaad, Switzerland.FIRST TIMEBy winning two matches Wednesday over teams from England and France, 19-year old Younousse of Qatar will also be playing in his first FIVB World Tour Main Draw with 25th-seeded Jefferson. “This is exciting since this is only my third world tour event,” said Younousse. “It was a tough and long day since both matches were three-setters. Obviously, this will be a very memorable day in my career.”A WEEKEND OFFFollowing 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.