Eylon Elazar & Kevin Cuzmiciov, seeded 10th in the qualification bracket, started their day with a 2-1 (27-29, 21-15, 15-6) victory over China’s Hong Jiajun & Li Jie. Elazar raised four kill blocks to lead his team with 26 points, while Cuzmiciov fired three aces and finished with 20 points. Hong was the best scorer of the match with 27 points, including five blocks. In the second qualification round, Elazar & Cuzmiciov put together a 2-1 (16-21, 21-13, 15-8) upset of another Chinese duo, seventh-seeded Wang Yanwei & Du Hongjun, with a match-high 27 points from Elazar, including three aces and three blocks. The Israeli pair entered the main draw as the 30th seed and in their first pool match, they will take on third-seeded Austrians Christoph Dressler & Philipp Waller.
Latvia’s Gustavs Auzins & Toms Liepa were the lowest ranked duo to push through the qualifiers to the main draw. Seeded 14th in the qualification bracket, they also started with a hard-fought comeback against Chinese opponents – 2-1 (22-24, 21-15, 15-13) over Zhang Tai & Song Jinyang with a match-high 27 points from Auzins and five kill blocks from Liepa. The Latvians managed to take their second match in hard-fought straight sets, delivering a 2-0 (21-18, 26-24) upset of third-seeded Goncalo Sousa & Tomas Sousa of Portugal. Liepa was in control of the net with 21 successful swings and three kill blocks.
All the other successful qualifiers got their job done without dropping any sets.
The two top-seeded teams, both from Switzerland, received byes in the first round and had only one match each to play on Wednesday. Number one Marco Krattiger & Leo Dillier mastered a 2-0 (21-13, 21-10) shutout of Canada’s Martin Licht & Luke de Greeff, while number two Adrian Heidrich & Jonathan Jordan produced a 2-0 (21-15, 21-15) sweep of their game against USA’s Jordan Hoppe & Derek Bradford.
12th-seeded Florian Breer & Luc Fluckiger of Switzerland joined their compatriots into the main draw with a 2-0 (21-16, 24-22) upset of the reigning U21 world champions, fifth-seeded Joppe Van Langendonck & Kyan Vercauteren of Belgium, in their second-round decider.
In the other three second-round qualifiers, fourth-seeded Bradley Fuller & Ben O'Dea of New Zealand achieved a 2-0 (21-19, 21-11) win over Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympians Alexander Huber & Robin Seidl of Austria, sixth-seeded Joadel Genevieve Gardoque & Elouan Chouikh-Barbez of France claimed a 2-0 (21-18, 21-19) victory over Poland’s Piotr Kantor & Filip Lejawa, while ninth-seeded Markus Mol & Adrian Mol of Norway took a tight 2-0 (21-19, 21-19) win over eighth-seeded Takumi Takahashi & Jumpei Ikeda of Japan.
