A1 Vienna Beach Major
- Danube Island; Vienna, Austria
- Aug. 1-5, 2018
- A1 Beach App
- Streaming Video
- Qualifying Schedule/Results
- Schedule/Results
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The men played just one round of qualifying matches at the Vienna Major on Tuesday with the action set to wrap up on Wednesday.
Americans Taylor Crabb/Jake Gibb and Bill Kolinske/Miles Evans won via sweep. Only one of the American pairs will make it to the main draw, however, as they are pitted against one another in Round 2.
Crabb/Gibb bested South Africa’s Alistair Glossop/Leo Williams (21-11, 21-10) and Kolinske/Evans edged Poland’s Kacper Kujawiak/Maciej Rudol (21-13, 21-18) in the opening round.
Four of the 16 matches went to tiebreak with Switzerland’s Nico Beeler/Marco Krattiger, Poland’s Mariusz Prudel/Jakub Szalankiewicz, Austria’s Robin Seidl/Philipp Waller and Belgium’s Dries Koekelkoren/Tom Van Walle staying alive. All four rallied after dropping their opening set of the tournament.
Teams from 13 countries are still in the running for the final eight main draw spots.
Among the 16 teams left in play are Chile’s Marco Grimalt/Esteban Grimalt, who won gold at the Tokyo Three Star on Sunday, earning the first ever FIVB World Tour medal in Chile’s history.
“We’ve played a lot of qualification tournaments this year and most of the times it went all, but we lost in Gstaad even playing a good match against the Belgians and it was good to win in Tokyo right after it as it didn’t let our confidence be down for any longer,” Esteban Grimalt said. “It’s always a lot of pressure to play in the qualification as one setbacks means you’re going home empty-handed, so it’s very important to control your feelings and play as relaxed as possible.”
Tournament action began on Monday with two country quota matches. Brazil’s George Wanderley/Thiago Santos Barbosa won the opening match with Alvaro Filho/Saymon Barbosa 21-19, 21-18, before falling to Ricardo Santos/Guto Carvalhaes 21-15, 21-17.
Ricardo/Guto then faced off with Lithuania’s Artur Vasiljev/Marius Malinauskas in the opening round of qualifying, winning 21-10, 21-17.
The Round 2 qualifying schedule is as follows:
- Crabb/Gibb (USA) vs. Kolinske/Evans (USA)
- Beeler/Krattiger (Switzerland) vs. Grimalt/Grimalt (Chile)
- Ahmed Tijan/Cherif Younousse (Qatar) vs. Prudel/Szalankiewicz (Poland)
- Seidl/Waller (Austria) vs. Marco Caminati/Enrico Rossi (Italy)
- Ricardo/Guto (Brazil) vs. Lukas Kazdailis/Arnas Rumsevicius (Lithuania)
- Murat Giginoglu/Volkan Gogtepe (Turkey) vs. Koekelkoren/Van Walle (Belgium)
- Grant O’Gorman/Ben Saxton (Canada) vs. Nicolas Capogrosso/Julian Azaad (Argentina)
- Gabriel Kissling/Michiel Zandbergen (Switzerland) vs. Adrian Heidrich/Mirco Gerson (Switzerland)
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