Moscow, Russia, May 29, 2015 - All 16 teams competing in the second round of the men’s elimination bracket here Friday at the US$800,000 Moscow Grand Slam will be competing in the upcoming FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships starting next month at four sites in The Netherlands.
With the FIVB World Tour returning to the Russian capital for the eighth-straight year, the feature match in Round 2 of elimination will pit reigning world champions Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen of The Netherlands against Italian Olympians Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo.
While the Italians had a first-round “bye” for the 24-team elimination bracket, Brouwer and Meeuwsen eliminated Russian teenagers Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Artem Yarzutkin 2-0 (21-18, 21-14) in a 33-minute opening center court match at the Vodny Stadium Beach Sports Center.
When asked about his team’s next opponent Friday in a post-match interview, Brouwer was quick to point out that the Italians “are one of our pool opponents in Rotterdam at the world championships. It is a preview of things to come and it will be a very tough match for us.”
The Dutch have lost four-straight FIVB World Tour meetings to Nicolai and Lupo after first playing the Italians in 2011 with a victory in Agadir, Morocco. Four of the five matches have been three-setters with the last meeting between the two teams in 2013 at the Brazilian Grand Slam in São Paulo.
Americans Phil Dalhausser and Sean Rosenthal, the top-seeded team in the Moscow Grand Slam, were eliminated Thursday after completing pool play with a 1-2 record. Dalhausser was hampered in his team’s final pool play match due to a strained left oblique muscle. Dalhausser had a MRI test Friday to determine extent of the injury and the results are not know.
The 2015 Moscow Grand Slam will feature a pair of new champions as the winners from the 2014 have been eliminated. Men’s champions Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Konstantin Semenov of Russia did not advance from pool play while Americans April Ross and Kerri Walsh Jennings placed 17th after forfeiting their last three matches due to the latter’s right shoulder injury.
The first “big” event on the 2015 FIVB World Tour, the US$800,000 Moscow Grand Slam continues through Sunday when the medal matches for both men and women will be played. Following the first two rounds of men’s elimination play Friday, the quarter- and semi-finals contests will be staged Saturday.
After this week’s event, the FIVB World Tour’s first “Major Series” stops are set for Croatia (Poreč, June 1-7) and Norway (Stavanger, June 8-14) before international circuit crosses the Atlantic for the final world championship “tune up” in the United States for the St. Petersburg Grand Slam in Florida (June 15-21).