Doha: Tim Holler and Jonas Schreiber will be out to repeat their heroics of last year when the qualifying rounds of the 2015 Doha Open begins today at the Qatar Beach Volleyball Academy courts at Al Gharafa.
The tournament is the final Open of 2015 and the last World Tour tournament of the year.
In 2014, Holler and Schreiber won their only gold medal of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour after they went from the qualifiers all the way to the top of the podium having defeated Canada’s Joshua Binstock and Sam Schachter in the gold medal match.
Since then their best result was a quarter-final finish at the Antalya Open in Turkey and this year they have been put straight in the main draw.
Standing in their way are the formidable pairing of former Olympic champion Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena, who will aim to continue the strong start to their partnership.
The American duo teamed up earlier in 2015 and have already enjoyed some notable success on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour.
They began with silver at the Long Beach Grand Slam, added another silver at the Sochi Open and then won their first gold together at the Xiamen Open. Since then the Americans have won silver at the World Tour Finals and another gold at the Puerto Vallarta Open.
Adrian Carambula and Alex Ranghieri are likely to push them hard for the right to top the podium. They Italians have enjoyed a stellar 2015 season and they go into the tournament in great form having won gold at the most recent tournament, the Antalya Open.
Another podium finish would cap the duo’s breakthrough year which began by them winning gold at the inaugural Lucerne Open in May.
Edouard Rowlandson and Youssef Krou will aim to add to the bronze medals that they won in 2014. The French pair have not yet enjoyed the same consistency that they enjoyed last year, but they will be aiming to end the year as they started it, with a place on the podium having won bronze on the season opening Fuzhou Open in China.
The Doha Open will be the eighth Open and final event on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour 2015 calendar in a season that extends from late April to mid-December. It will be the second event after the FIVB World Tour Season Final, with points from the tournament going towards the 2016 ranking.
Hosts Qatar will field two at the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour event which concludes on November 13.
Jefferson Pereira/Cherif Younnouse and Mahmoud Assam/Ahmad Tijan will be the twin teams which will see action in the tournament. It is the second time that Doha is hosting the tournament.
The tournament, originally scheduled to be held from November 17 to 21, was advanced as per the request of the Qatar Volleyball Association (QVA) which wanted it to finish one week earlier and on a Friday.
The FIVB-sanctioned event is the eighth of the 10 Open events on the 2015 World Tour and are part of the 2016 Olympic qualification process.
“It’s for the second year in a row that we’re hosting the FIVB event. The QVA has an agreement with FIVB to host the World Tour event till 2016. We’re even exploring the option of hosting a Grand Slam event in future,” said QVA General-Secretary Mohammed Ali Al Mohannadi.
The Peninsula
