beach volleyball

Qatar’s Younousse and Tijan enter Katara Cup semifinals

Doha: Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan seemed to have found their rhythm after a slow start at the FIVB World Tour Katara Beach Volleyball Cup. The Qataris, who got their acts together in the nick of time on Wednesday to enter the knock out round after losing two matches in the group phase, won three on Thursday, including a thriller against Poland’s Michal Bryl and Grzegorz Fijalek to book their place in the semifinals.

Younousse and Tijan started slowly against Bryl and Fijalek to lose the first set 15-21, but they came back strongly in the next two to win 21-16, 15-10 in 47 minutes.

Earlier, Younousse and Tijan defeated Canada’s Sam Pedlow and Sam Schachter 21-19, 21-14 in their first knock-out match before surviving in three sets against Norway’s Anders Berntsen Mol and Christian Sandlie Sorum 18-21, 21 – 18, 20-18 in the last 16.

The Qataris will take on Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen in the semifinals on Friday at 3.30 pm after the Dutch duo, seeded fifth, got the better of Brazilians Saymon Barbosa Santos and Alvaro Morais Filho 19-21, 21-19, 22-20 in the last eight.

The second semifinal will pit Philip Dalhausser and Nicholas Lucena of the US against Russians Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Igor Velichko.

While Dalhausser and Lucena, the top seeds of the tournament, got the better of Poland’s Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak 37-35, 13-21, 15-6, Stoyanovskiy and Velichko defeated Latvia’s Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins 21-15, 21-13.

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