Pelhrimov, Czech Republic, January 11, 2018.  The two elimination rounds of qualifications for the men’s main draw at the 2018 CEV Beach Volleyball European Masters in Pelhrimov delivered plenty of exciting action before sending one Latvian, one Polish and two Austrian pairs into the best 16 of the tournament.

One of the Austrian duos, Robin Seidl and Christoph Dressler, seeded fifth in the qualification bracket, had to persevere through the two longest-running men’s matches on the indoor sand courts of the Beachwell on Thursday. First, they eliminated Serbia’s Lazar Kolaric and Djordje Klasnic, claiming a 2-1 (21-16, 18-21, 19-17) victory in 57 minutes. Then, they needed another 52 minutes of play time to book their spot in the main draw with another three-set win – 2-1 (21-13, 19-21, 15-12) against fourth-seeded Italians Alex Ranghieri and Marco Caminati.

“It is a such a great feeling to win against a great team like Ranghieri and Caminati,” Robin Seidl exclaimed. “It shows that we are on the right track. We are definitely going for more and looking forward to tomorrow. We want to play our best, improve game by game and get stronger together. We are really happy here - people here are very nice and it is a very familiar place.”

The other Austrian pair, Tobias Winter and Julian Hörl, started the day off with a speedy 29-minute 2-0 (21-16, 21-11) win against France’s Maxime Thiercy and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat, but then also had to survive a thrilling three-setter in the second round. They stamped their place in the main draw with a tough 2-1 (25-23, 17-21, 15-13) victory over third-seeded Dutch tandem Christiaan Varenhorst and Jasper Bouter.

“Every match in qualification was tough today, because the participating teams are very strong,”said Julian Hörl. “Especially tough it was for us against the guys from the Netherlands. They finished fourth last weekend at the World Tour stop in The Hague, but we managed to beat them here, in Pelhrimov. This is really a high-level tournament and I like it.”

It was not any easier for second-seeded Poles Mariusz Prudel and Jakub Szalankiewicz. In the first round, they managed a hard-fought 2-0 (21-18, 24-22) shutout of Turkey’s Hasan Huseyin Mermer and Murat Giginoglu, but did not get away without playing a tie-breaker in the second. A 2-1 (21-17, 11-25, 15-10) victory over Latvia’s Rihards Finsters and Aleksandrs Solovejs propelled Prudel and Szalankiewicz into the main draw.

Only the top-seeded Latvians Martins Plavins and Edgars Tocs managed to cruise from the qualifications into the men’s main draw without losing a set. They mastered a 2-0 (21-15, 21-11) win against Czech wildcards Jindrich Weiss and Martin Tichy and a 2-0 (21-18, 21-16) win against Germany’s Nils Ehlers and Lorenz Schümann.

The 16 main draw teams have been distributed into four pools of four before the start of Friday’s action scheduled for 09:00 local time on all three courts.

All matches on court 3 will be streamed live on CEV’s YouTube channel and will be available for viewing by the fans in the Czech Republic and all countries where TV rights have not been sold.

To follow the live score of all the games on the event’s webpage, click here.

Engage with the 2018 CEV Beach Volleyball European Masters Pelhrimov on social media by using the competition’s official hashtag #EuroBeachVolley.

Click here for more information on the Pelhrimov Masters.