Three men’s teams started their campaigns at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Doha Finals with two wins each on Wednesday, but for two of them – home heroes Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan and Sweden’s David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig – it was a matter of surviving two tie-breakers, while Netherlands’ Stefan Boermans & Yorick de Groot swept both of their matches in straight sets.
competition/Beach Pro Tour
Home heroes Cherif & Ahmed win two tie-breakers on Doha Finals opening day
Boermans & De Groot and Ahman & Hellvig also start off with two wins each
Published 07:58, 04 Dec 2024
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Pool A
After exchanging two overtime sets with their opponents, top-seeded Cherif & Ahmed dominated the third set on the way to a 2-1 (20-22, 22-20, 15-9) victory over 10th-seeded world champions Ondrej Perusic & David Schweiner of Czechia in the Pool A opening game on centre court. Cherif and Schweiner engaged in a monster-blocking duel, which the Qatari athlete won with eight kill blocks towards a 33-point match high, against six for the Czech blocker.
In their second match, the home team mounted another comeback from a set down and celebrated a 2-1 (16-21, 21-19, 15-9) victory over eighth-seeded Italians Samuele Cottafava & Paolo Nicolai. Cherif led the winners’ scoring with 26 points, topped by Nicolai’s 28, which included four aces.
Fourth-seeded Boermans & De Groot topped the current pool standings with straight-set victories over Cottafava & Nicolai, 2-0 (21-11, 21-18), and over Paris 2024 Olympic silver medallists, fifth-seeded Germans Nils Ehlers & Clemens Wickler, 2-0 (21-16, 21-19). Boermans was the best scorer of the first match with 20 points, while De Groot topped the charts in the second with 17.
Pool B
Only the reigning Olympic champions and FIVB World Ranking leaders Ahman & Hellvig managed to win two matches on day one in Pool B, but the second-seeded Swedish standouts were pushed to three sets in both. First, they came back from a set down to beat ninth-seeded English wild cards Joaquin Bello & Javier Bello by a narrow 2-1 (19-21, 21-11, 16-14). Hellvig raised seven kill blocks, against five from Joaquin Bello, and topped the scorers’ chart with a total of 27 points.
In the other first-leg match, seventh-seeded Brazilians Evandro Oliveira & Arthur Mariano produced a 2-1 (18-21, 21-13, 15-12) upset of third-seeded Norwegians Anders Mol & Christian Sorum, with Arthur and Mol leading the scorers with 20 points each.
Evandro & Arthur were very close to dropping another big upset in their second match, but their opponents Ahman & Hellvig persevered through a tight tie-breaker to claim a 2-1 (21-10, 19-21, 15-13) victory. This time Hellvig impressed with nine kill blocks to finish with 24 points, while Evandro emerged as the best scorer with 32 points, including four aces and three blocks.
Mol & Sorum bounced back to spoil Matthew Immers & Steven van de Velde’s tournament opener with a 2-0 (21-17, 21-18) shutout. Mol’s blocking was on fire and he piled up an out-of-this-world 11 kill blocks during the two sets of the match, to finish with a 20-point match high.
Another eight men’s pool-stage matches will be played on the second day with first whistle at 15:00 local time (12:00 UTC).