The tournament in Bhubaneswar will serve off right on Jakub Sepka’s 24th birthday. Fittingly, he and his new partner Matyas Dzavoronok, also 24 years old, will have a rest day as they will skip the first leg of pool play with a bye. So, they will make their Beach Pro Tour debut as a pair on Friday in the Pool A final against the winners of the match between Ukraine’s Dmytro Kozii & Oleksii Bublyk and Mount Maunganui silver medalists Gage Basey & Thomas Hurst of the United States.
Sepka competed with his previous teammate Jiri Sedlak for two seasons. During that period, they collected two gold medals and one silver on the Beach Pro Tour. They also took a prestigious fifth place at the 2024 CEV European Championship and achieved three ninth-place finishes at Elite events, including at their last appearance together in Itapema in December.
Dzavoronok also finished ninth in Itapema alongside his previous partner Tadeas Trousil, who went on to replace the legendary former world champion Ondrej Perusic as David Schweiner’s teammate. Dzavoronok & Trousil also picked up three medals on the 2025 Beach Pro Tour – one gold and two bronzes.
Another four teams will get byes in their first main draw games in Bhubaneswar and move directly to the winners’ matches in their pools – second-seeded Evan Cory & Derek Bradford of USA in Pool B, third-seeded Eylon Elazar & Kevin Cuzmiciov of Israel in Pool C, fourth-seeded Frederick Bialokoz & Issa Batrane of England in Pool D, and fifth-seeded Nils Gunnar Ringoen & Even Stray Aas of Norway in Pool E.
The remaining pool leaders – sixth-seeded Tomas Semerad & Adam Stocek of Czechia, 2023 U21 world champions Joppe Van Langendonck & Kyan Vercauteren of Belgium, seeded seventh, and host nation India’s highest-ranked pair Abithan Senthilkumar & Udaya Suriyan Poonthamizhan, seeded eighth – will have to join the action from the first leg and win at least one match in their pool, in order to advance to the playoffs.
