Beach Volleyball World Championships Adelaide 2025

Dressler owns the net in first knockout game to push team into sixteenthfinals

Men’s round of 36 completed, sixteenthfinal match-ups all lined up

Published 07:58, 18 Nov 2025

Dressler/Waller (AUT) vs. Mol, M./Mol (NOR) - Lucky losers #72703430

Austria’s Christoph Dressler

Austria’s Christoph Dressler owned the net in the most interesting of the four matches in Tuesday’s men’s round of 36 at the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship, dubbed “the lucky loser round”. The Austrian blocker nailed an impressive 39 points as he and partner Philipp Waller outlasted Norway’s Markus Mol & Adrian Mol in a three-set battle. Another Austrian duo, Timo Hammarberg & Tim Berger, as well as Canada’s Samuel Schachter & Jonathan Pickett and New Zealand’s Bradley Fuller & Ben O'Dea, won their first playoff matches in Adelaide and pushed through to the sixteenthfinals.

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Dressler fired two aces and hammered out 30 successful swings to add to an impressive seven kill blocks towards a 2-1 (21-16, 18-21, 15-13) victory over the Norwegians. Waller chipped in with another 11 points, also featuring two aces. 21-year-old Adrian Mol led the northern European team with 23 points. On Wednesday, the Austrian pair will take on another Norwegian opponent – Hendrik Mol & Mathias Berntsen – in a duel for a spot in the eighthfinals.

The other Austrian duo in the tournament – Hammarberg & Berger – also stayed alive in the competition with a 2-0 (21-15, 21-17) shutout of Switzerland’s Adrian Heidrich & Jonathan Jordan, with six kill blocks from Hammarberg towards a team-high 15 points. The Austrians will take on Brazil’s Andre Stein & Renato Lima in the sixteenthfinals.

In another exciting three-setter, Schachter & Pickett celebrated a 2-1 (21-18, 19-21, 15-9) win over Ruben Penninga & Matthew Immers of the Netherlands and headed towards a sixteenthfinal clash with the world’s number one team, top-seeded Norwegians Anders Mol & Christian Sorum. Pickett was the Canadian team’s leading scorer with 20 points against the Dutch.

After an overtime second set, Fuller & O'Dea closed their encounter with England’s Javier Bello & Joaquin Bello in straight sets, 2-0 (21-17, 22-20). O’Dea put up as many as seven kill blocks to finish with a match-high 29 points towards the victory. Next, the Kiwis will face fourth-seeded Brazilians Evandro Oliveira & Arthur Mariano Lanci on Wednesday.