Lorenz & Rietschel, seeded 23rd in the 24-team main draw, topped Pool B after a 2-0 (21-18, 21-18) sweep of the winners match against Austria’s Laurenc Grossig & Paul Pascariuc. Next, the Germans will meet another team that came out of the qualifiers, 16th-seeded Evan Cory & Cody Caldwell of the United States, who finished Pool D runners-up and went on to squeeze out a 2-1 (21-19, 18-21, 16-14) victory over sixth-seeded home favourites Wang Yanwei & Du Hongjun in the first knockout round.
Similarly, 19th-seeded Mol & Mol conquered the top of Pool F on a narrow 2-0 (21-19, 22-20) win over USA’s Hagen Smith & Logan Webber and will also take on another qualifying team, 17th-seeded Joadel Genevieve-Gardoque & Elouan Chouikh-Barbez of France, who managed a 2-1 (21-16, 13-21, 15-10) first-round victory over USA’s Timothy Brewster & Theodore Brunner.
The remaining pool winners – top-seeded Thomas Hodges & Zachery Schubert of Australia, third-seeded Philipp Huster & Maximilian Just of Germany, fourth-seeded Gianluca Dal Corso & Marco Viscovich of Italy and fifth-seeded Chaim Schalk & James Shaw of USA – also advanced directly to the second elimination round where they will be challenged by the first round winners - eighth-seeded Ardis Bedritis & Arturs Rinkevics of Latvia, second-seeded D'Artagnan Potts & Jack Pearse of Australia, 11th-seeded Laurenc Grossig & Paul Pascariuc of Austria and ninth-seeded Remi Bassereau with Calvin Aye of France, respectively.
The first men’s round-of-12 matches on Saturday will get underway at 11:00 local time (03:00 UTC).
