Brazil’s Pedro Solberg & Gustavo Carvalhaes (Guto), who started the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Paris Elite16 from Wednesday’s qualifiers, won all three of their pool matches in the main draw and advanced directly to the quarterfinals of the men’s tournament at Roland-Garros Stadium. So did their compatriots Andre Stein & George Wanderley, Czechia’s Ondrej Perusic & David Schweiner, and Stefan Boermans & Yorick de Groot of the Netherlands. The duos that finished second or third in their pool standings progressed to the eighthfinals.

• Watch the Beach Pro Tour Paris Elite16 main draw live on VBTV.

12^th-seeded Pedro Solberg & Guto had to deal with two tie-breakers on Friday. In their second Pool D match in the morning, they came back from a set down against Dutch qualifiers and last year’s silver medallists Alexander Brouwer & Robert Meeuwsen to push the match into the overtime of a third set and celebrate a victory. Pedro Solberg contributed eight kill blocks and an ace to the success, finishing with 23 points, while Brouwer topped that with 29. The South Americans went on to face fifth-seeded Italians Adrian Carambula & Alex Ranghieri and after surviving an overtime first set and losing the second, they ended up registering their first win in the pool, . Ranghieri was the best scorer of that game with 31 points to his name. It was the Italians’ third tie-breaker loss in the pool and they had to say goodbye to the tournament.

Fourth-seeded Frenchmen Youssef Krou & Arnaud Gauthier-Rat had beaten them by earlier in the day with 27 points from Krou, including five blocks and two aces. So the very last match of pool play, between the Dutch and the French, served them to distribute the second and the third places in Pool D. They put up a three-set battle, in which Brouwer & Meeuwsen celebrated a win.

George and Andre also claimed two victories on Friday to finish on top of Pool C undefeated. First, the third-seeded Brazilians fought their way to a win over Italy’s Paolo Nicolai & Samuele Cottafava. Andre led the winners with 27 points, including five blocks, while Nicolai came up with the match high of 29 points. Then the South Americans were awarded a forfeit win over Austrian qualifiers Julian Horl & Alexander Horst. The Italians bounced back with a shutout of France’s Julien Lyneel & Remi Bassereau to finish second in the pool. The Austrians had also defeated the home pair in a straight-setter earlier in the day to finish third and also advance to Saturday’s eighthfinals.

On Friday, second-seeded Perusic & Schweiner produced their third win in Pool B to top the final standings. They achieved a shutout of Marco Grimalt & Esteban Grimalt, knocking the Chilean cousins out of contention. In what turned out to be a head-to-head clash for the second place in the pool, Germany’s Clemens Wickler & Nils Ehlers overcame the resistance of Poland’s Michal Bryl & Bartosz Losiak on the way to a win, as both duos advanced to the first knockout round.

Boermans & Yorick de Groot and Brazil’s Evandro Oliveira & Arthur Mariano, who had both moved through the first two legs in Pool A undefeated, met face to face on Friday morning to determine the pool winners in a direct battle, pushing it to three sets. In the end, the Dutchmen celebrated a victory to book a direct flight to the quarterfinals. While Evandro impressed with six serving aces, Boermans mastered six kill blocks towards a match-high 23 points. Top-seeded Americans Miles Partain & Andrew Benesh survived in the tournament after beating Australian qualifiers Thomas Hodges & Zachery Schubert in a hard-fought three-setter for the third place, thus scoring their first win in Paris and joining the Brazilians into the eighthfinals. Partain led the scorers with 26 points, including three aces.

VW Beach Pro Tour Paris Elite16: schedule and results

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