22-year-old Markus Mol and 20-year-old Adrian Mol, younger brothers of distinguished beach volleyball star Anders Mol, were seeded 15th in the 32-team qualification bracket in Haikou. They started their campaign with a 2-0 (21-19, 21-18) sweep of their first-round match against Austrian Olympian Alexander Huber and his partner Felix Friedl. The latter raised as many as nine kill blocks to match Adrian Mol’s 21-point match high, but that proved insufficient to counter Norway’s emphatic domination in attack.
In a second-round decider, Mol & Mol disposed of second-seeded Brazilians Pedro Augusto Sousa De Oliveira & Mateus De Paula Dultra with a convincing 2-0 (21-13, 21-14) shutout. This time, the blocking and the serving also worked well for the Norwegians, especially for Markus, who put away six stuffs and four aces towards a 17-point match high.
Seeded 19th in the 24-team main draw, Mol & Mol will start their first Challenge-level main draw campaign in Pool F against the sixth-seeded representatives of host country China Wang Yanwei & Du Hongjun on Thursday.
24th-seeded Pablo Perez Suarez & Nathan Matos were the lowest ranked team to qualify for the main draw. They did so after a 2-0 (24-22, 21-6) upset of ninth-seeded Nassim Malki & Kosuke Fukushima of Japan and a 2-1 (22-20, 16-21, 15-9) victory over another Japanese duo, eighth-seeded Kai Kurokawa & Ryuichi Adachi.
France’s Joadel Genevieve-Gardoque & Elouan Chouikh-Barbez, seeded 11th, had the toughest day in Haikou. They survived two epic tie-breakers to break into the main draw. In the first round, they mounted a 2-1 (19-21, 21-19, 17-15) comeback against China’s Zhou Yongji & Xu Zongqi, and in the second, they battled it out for a 2-1 (21-17, 16-21, 22-20) upset of sixth-seeded Jakub Krzeminski & Szymon Pietraszek of Poland.
Seventh-seeded Evan Cory & Cody Caldwell of USA, 14th-seeded Szymon Beta & Filip Lejawa of Poland, 16th-seeded Lubos Nemec & Adrian Petruf of Slovakia, 20th-seeded Antonio Saucedo & Alvaro Viera of Spain and 21st-seeded Momme Lorenz & Tilo Rietschel of Germany were the other five successful teams in Wednesday’s qualifiers.
Haikou Challenge men’s main draw will get underway on Thursday morning at 10:00 local time (02:00 UTC).
