Swedish teenagers Jacob Holting Nilsson & Elmer Andersson continued their successful run at the Chennai Challenge on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour. After Thursday’s success in the qualifications that brought them to their first ever Challenge-level main draw, they went on to win both their pool matches on Friday and advanced directly to the second elimination round on Saturday. Australia’s Thomas Hodges & Zachery Schubert, Netherlands’ Leon Luini & Ruben Penninga, Austria’s Philipp Waller & Timo Hammarberg, USA’s Chaim Schalk & James Shaw and German qualifiers Paul Henning & Lui Wust also won their pools to claim straight passage to the round of 12. The teams that finished second or third in their pools moved on to the first knockout round to be played on Saturday morning.

• Watch the Chennai Challenge on VBTV.

In the Pool F winners match, 19-year-old Holting Nilsson and 18-year-old Andersson, seeded 19^th in the main draw, achieved a 2-1 (21-18, 16-21, 15-10) victory over Estonia’s Mart Tiisaar & Dimitriy Korotkov to top the final pool standings. Last week’s Haikou Challenge winners Evan Cory & Cody Caldwell of the United States finished third in the pool and also advanced to the single elimination phase of the tournament.

Another team coming from Thursday’s qualifiers, Henning & Wust, topped Pool D after surviving two three-set matches. In the decider for the first place, the 16^th-seeded Germans managed a 2-1 (21-18, 17-21, 15-12) win over fellow German qualifiers Jonas Sagstetter & Benedikt Sagstetter. The third team that progressed from this pool was also German – fourth-seeded Philipp Huster & Maximilian Just.

Eighth-seeded Schalk & Shaw also persevered through two tie-breakers to finish first in Pool E. In a dramatic winners game, they mounted a 2-1 (20-22, 23-21, 15-12) comeback against fifth-seeded Frenchmen Remi Bassereau & Calvin Aye. The third place in the pool went to Belgium’s Kyan Vercauteren & Joppe Van Langendonck.

In the Pool A final, top-seeded Aussies Hodges & Schubert hammered out a 2-0 (21-15, 21-15) shutout of Austria’s Christoph Dressler & Tim Berger, while USA’s Taylor Crabb & Theodore Brunner moved forward as the third-placed team.

Third-seeded Waller & Hammarberg swept through Pool C without dropping a set. In the duel for the top of the standings, the Austrians mastered a 2-0 (21-18, 24-22) victory over Brazil’s Vinicius Freitas & Heitor Barbosa. Ukraine’s Eduard Reznik & Ivan Datsiuk finished third in the pool.

The biggest surprise came from Pool B, where second-seeded Australians D'Artagnan Potts & Jack Pearse lost both of their matches and dropped out of contention. In the pool final, 14^th-seeded Dutchmen Luini & Penninga delivered a 2-0 (21-14, 21-18) win over Slovakian qualifiers Lubos Nemec & Adrian Petruf, while the third place was claimed by Latvia’s Ardis Bedritis & Arturs Rinkevics.

VW Beach Pro Tour Chennai Challenge: results and schedule

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