Despite losing deep into the overtime tie-breaker of the last match of women’s pool play at the 2023 Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Finals in Doha, Australia’s Taliqua Clancy & Mariafe Artacho Del Solar stamped their direct ticket to Saturday’s semifinals, while their opponents Taina Bigi & Victoria Lopes of Brazil secured the Pool B runners-up position and a spot in Friday’s quarterfinals as the playoff bracket shaped up.

Clancy & Mariafe await the winner of the quarterfinal between Canada’s Melissa Humana-Paredes & Brandie Wilkerson and USA’s Taryn Kloth & Kristen Nuss, while Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda) & Ana Patricia Ramos of Brazil will clash with the winner of the other quarterfinal, between Taina & Victoria and Germany’s Cinja Tillmann & Svenja Muller.

· Watch the Beach Pro Tour Doha Finals live on VBTV.

The only match on Friday’s Pool B programme could have made all sorts of rearrangements in the final pool standings and the outcome was important to all four teams in contention for the playoffs. Clancy & Mariafe and Taina & Victoria pushed their duel into a tie-breaker, in which the gap swung from three points the Aussies’ way at 6-3 to four points the Brazilians’ way at 11-7 and at 14-10. Numerous match points on both sides of the net were denied before Taina & Victoria could finally celebrate an epic victory. Clancy produced an amazing match high of 40 points, including three aces and five blocks, while Victoria led the winners with four aces towards a 31-point tally.

After all the point ratios were calculated accordingly, Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medallists Clancy & Mariafe topped the table on a 3-1 win-loss record and a slightly better point ratio than Taina & Victoria, who also finished on 3-1, overtaking Nuss & Kloth into the second place and pushing Katja Stam & Raisa Schoon down to fourth and out of contention. Both the Americans and the Dutch finished on a 2-2 win-loss record, but the point ratio tilted the balance in favour of Nuss & Kloth.

Friday’s important match in Pool A also went to three sets. Both Melissa & Brandie and Muller & Tillmann had already secured their spots in the quarterfinals, so the battle between them was all about positioning in the playoff bracket. The Canadians managed a victory on a 25-point match high by Brandie, including an ace and as many as seven kill blocks, to finish pool runners-up on 3-1, below undefeated pool toppers Ana Patricia & Duda. The Germans settled for the third place in the pool on 2-2.

Latvia’s Anastasija Samoilova & Tina Graudina finished the tournament on a high note, with a prestigious shutout of reigning world champions Sara Hughes & Kelly Cheng, which placed them fourth in the pool on 1-3. Surprisingly, the Americans failed to win a single match in Doha and will leave Qatar as fifth in the pool on a 0-4 win-loss record.

In the first quarterfinal on Friday evening, Muller & Tillmann will take on Taina & Victoria at 19:00 local time (16:00 UTC), while Nuss & Kloth will challenge Melissa & Brandie at 20:00 (17:00).

VW Beach Pro Tour Doha Finals: schedule and results

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