Despite losing deep into the overtime tie-breaker of the last match of women’s pool play at the 2023 Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Finals in Doha, Australia’s Taliqua Clancy & Mariafe Artacho Del Solar stamped their direct ticket to Saturday’s semifinals, while their opponents Taina Bigi & Victoria Lopes of Brazil secured the Pool B runners-up position and a spot in Friday’s quarterfinals as the playoff bracket shaped up.

Clancy & Mariafe await the winner of the quarterfinal between Canada’s Melissa Humana-Paredes & Brandie Wilkerson and USA’s Taryn Kloth & Kristen Nuss, while Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda) & Ana Patricia Ramos of Brazil will clash with the winner of the other quarterfinal, between Taina & Victoria and Germany’s Cinja Tillmann & Svenja Muller.

· Watch the Beach Pro Tour Doha Finals live on VBTV.

The only match on Friday’s Pool B programme could have made all sorts of rearrangements in the final pool standings and the outcome was important to all four teams in contention for the playoffs. Clancy & Mariafe and Taina & Victoria pushed their duel into a tie-breaker, in which the gap swung from three points the Aussies’ way at 6-3 to four points the Brazilians’ way at 11-7 and at 14-10. Numerous match points on both sides of the net were denied before Taina & Victoria could finally celebrate an epic 2-1 (21-15, 18-21, 25-23) victory. Clancy produced an amazing match high of 40 points, including three aces and five blocks, while Victoria led the winners with four aces towards a 31-point tally.

After all the point ratios were calculated accordingly, Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medallists Clancy & Mariafe topped the table on a 3-1 win-loss record and a slightly better point ratio than Taina & Victoria, who also finished on 3-1, overtaking Nuss & Kloth into the second place and pushing Katja Stam & Raisa Schoon down to fourth and out of contention. Both the Americans and the Dutch finished on a 2-2 win-loss record, but the point ratio tilted the balance in favour of Nuss & Kloth.

Friday’s important match in Pool A also went to three sets. Both Melissa & Brandie and Muller & Tillmann had already secured their spots in the quarterfinals, so the battle between them was all about positioning in the playoff bracket. The Canadians managed a 2-1 (21-18, 16-21, 15-10) victory on a 25-point match high by Brandie, including an ace and as many as seven kill blocks, to finish pool runners-up on 3-1, below undefeated pool toppers Ana Patricia & Duda. The Germans settled for the third place in the pool on 2-2.

Latvia’s Anastasija Samoilova & Tina Graudina finished the tournament on a high note, with a prestigious 2-0 (21-19, 21-18) shutout of reigning world champions Sara Hughes & Kelly Cheng, which placed them fourth in the pool on 1-3. Surprisingly, the Americans failed to win a single match in Doha and will leave Qatar as fifth in the pool on a 0-4 win-loss record.

In the first quarterfinal on Friday evening, Muller & Tillmann will take on Taina & Victoria at 19:00 local time (16:00 UTC), while Nuss & Kloth will challenge Melissa & Brandie at 20:00 (17:00).

VW Beach Pro Tour Doha Finals: schedule and results

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