The Hague, The Netherlands, July 18, 2014 - Teams from Chile, Kazakhstan, Mexico and Switzerland posted unexpected advancements in the men’s competition at US$1-million Transavia Grand Slam presented by Bas Van de Goor Foundation here Friday with eight tandems joining Thursday’s pool winners in the second-round of the elimination bracket.
Two of the advancers from Friday’s earlier men’s matches were qualifying teams to the “money” rounds from Tuesday’s preliminary competition - 26th-seeded Sebastian Chevallier/Alexei Strasser of Switzerland and 28th-seeded Esteban Grimalt/Marco Grimalt of Chile. Other “surprise” teams were 19th-seeded Alexey Sidorenko/Alexandr Dyachenko of Kazakhstan and 25th-seeded Lombardo Ontiveros/Juan Virgen of Mexico.
As the host country, The Netherlands had two teams advancing to the next round of elimination Friday as 10th-seeded and reigning FIVB world champions Alexander/Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen and ninth-seeded Jon Stiekema/Christiaan Varnhorst eliminated pairs from Italy and The Netherlands, respectively, in their opening matches Friday.
The Hague Beach Stadium and two courts on Scheveningen beach are being used for the ninth men’s FIVB World Tour event this season. Here is the men’s second-round elimination bracket schedule:
• John Hyden/Tri Bourne, United States (15, Q2) vs. Nick Lucena/Ryan Doherty United States (11)
• Grzegorz Fijalek/Mariusz Prudel, Poland (6) vs. Alexey Sidorenko/Alexandr Dyachenko, Kazakhstan (19)
• Emanuel Rego/Pedro Salgado, Brazil (8) vs. Sebastian Chevallier/Alexei Strasser, Switzerland (26, Q9)
• Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Janis Smedins, Latvia (4) vs. Esteban Grimalt/Marco Grimalt, Chile (28, Q11)
• Alison Cerutti/Bruno Oscar Schmidt, Brazil (3) vs. Jake Gibb/Casey Patterson, United States (13)
• Jonathan Erdmann/Kay Matysik, Germany (7) vs. Jon Stiekema/Christiaan Varenhorst, Netherlands (9)
• Pablo Herrera/Adrian Gavira, Spain (5) vs. Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen, Netherlands (10)
• Sean Rosenthal/Phil Dalhausser, United States (1) vs. Lombardo Ontiveros/Juan Virgen, Mexico (25)
As a “prelude” to the 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, the final three days of the Transavia Grand Slam will be staged only at the Scheveningen courts where the medal matches will be played Sunday. The final two teams in both gender’s competition with be competing for the gold medals and a share of the $70,000 first-place prize for each winning team.
Following this week’s event, the FIVB World Tour returns to the United States for the second-straight year as Long Beach in southern California hosts another $1-million event. The international circuit returns to Europe in August for stops in Austria (Klagenfurt, July 29-August 3) and Poland (Stare Jablonki, August 19-24).