Lucerne, Switzerland, May 15, 2015 - In addition to being a new Beach Volleyball site on the FIVB World Tour, the US$150,000 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Lucerne Open 2015 will be known as the tournament of the “unexpected” success for lower-seeded men’s teams as only three of the top eight teams won their pools as “expected” after the completion of group play here Friday.
COOL & RAINY CONDITIONS
After four “ideal” days of weather conditions on the Lake Lucerne Lido courts, the outside elements took a turn for the worse Friday with temperatures hovering around 9°C (48°F) with consistent rain showers as the men’s 24-match schedule also featured the first-round of play in the 24-team elimination bracket.
“UNEXPECTED” SUCCESSES
Friday’s final pool play round was highlighted by nine wins by lower-seeded pairs. Combined with Thursday’s 11 seed-break-throughs and the 12 “upsets” in Wednesday’s Main Draw qualifier, a total of 32 of the first 72 men’s matches resulted in “unexpected” victories by the lower-seeded tandems.
Joining 27th-seeded Alex Ranghieri/Marco Caminati of Italy (Pool F) and 29th-seeded Yaroslav Koshkarev/Dmitri Barsouk of Russia (Pool D) as “unexpected” winners of men’s pools were 10th-seeded Murat Giginoglu/Volkan Gogtepe of Turkey (Pool G), 16th-seeded Lombardo Ontiveros/Juan Virgen of Mexico (Pool A) and 18th-seeded Jackson Henriquez/Jesus Villafane of Venezuela (Pool B).
QUALIFIER + MAIN DRAW = 5-0
Combined with a pair of wins each Wednesday, both the Italians and Russians are 5-0 in the Lucerne Open competition. By winning their groups, both teams along with the Turkish, Mexicans and the Venezuelans are guaranteed a “bye” in the first-round of the elimination bracket that will be played later Friday.
“EXPECTED” POOL WINNERS
Capturing pools as expected Friday were the pairs of third-seeded Viacheslav Krasilnikov/Konstantin Semenov (Pool C), fifth-seeded Adrian Gavira/Pablo Herrera of Spain (Pool E) and eighth-seeded Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen of The Netherlands (Pool H). All three tandems earned a first-round “bye” as each group winner is guaranteed a ninth-place finish in the Lucerne Open.
FRIDAY’S “ELIMINATION ELITE”
After a draw to determine of the second- and third-place pool finishers in the 24-team elimination bracket, eight teams advanced to Saturday’s opening matches against the eight pool winners. Winners of opening elimination matches to earn a spot in the next round of elimination were the teams of top-seeded Philip Gabathuler/Mirco Gerson of Switzerland, second-seeded Samoilovs/Smedins of Latvia, fourth-seeded Vitor Felipe/Alvaro Filho of Brazil, ninth-seeded Piotr Kantor/Bartosz Losiak of Poland, 15th-seeded Jonathan Erdmann/Marcus Popp of Germany, the 21st-seeded Ingrosso (Matteo/Paolo) of Italy, 26th-seeded Kristo Kollo/Rivo Vesik of Estonia and 28th-seeded Nico Beeler/Alexei Strasser of Switzerland.
SATURDAY’S SLATE
The US$150,000 Lucerne Open will feature 18 matches Saturday, including the men’s second-round and quarter-final matches. The women’s quarter- and semi-final matches will also be played. The men’s semi-finals will start Sunday’s schedule followed by the medal matches for both genders. The winning pairs will each share the $11,000 first-place prizes per gender.
FIVB WORLD TOUR & OLYMPICS
The 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.
IDLE TIME AWAITS
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.