Lausanne, Switzerland, March 12, 2018 - After staging events over the past 19 days in Iran, the United States and Qatar, a month of FIVB World Tour competition ends this week with international beach volleyball tournaments in Oman and the Netherlands.
The inaugural Muscat Open in Oman begins on Wednesday with qualifying, with the Main Draw starting on Thursday followed by elimination rounds on Friday and Saturday at the Musannah Sports City. The second annual Aalsmeer Open features qualifying on Thursday and Main Draw/Elimination Rounds from Friday through to Sunday at The Beach Indoor Sport & Event Centre.
A total of $5,000 in prize money will be available for both FIVB World Tour events that features men's-only play. The Muscat and Aalsmeer Opens mark the ninth and 10th men's events on the 2017-2018 international beach volleyball calendar.
Qatar's Julio Nascimento and Jefferson Santos Pereira will be the featured team in Oman. Jefferson participated in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games where he and Cherif Younousse won two of four matches to place ninth.
Rio 2016 Olympian Jefferson Santos Pereira of Qatar
Host country favourites will be Haitham al Shuraiqi/Ahmed al Hosn and Nouh al Jalboobi/Mazin al Hashmi as the two teams finished second and fourth last November at the Arab Beach Volleyball World Championship hosted by Oman.
Aalsmeer will be hosting its second FIVB event on the 2017-2018 World Tour schedule with the Dutch site staging a men's and women's event this past October with pairs from Italy (Marco Carminati/Enrico Rossi) and the Netherlands (Madelein Meppelink/Joy Stubbe) winning the gold medal matches.
Half of the winning Italian team is in this week's Aalsmeer event with Rossi competing with Jakob Windisch as the pair starts play in Thursday's qualifier. Headlining the Aalsmeer entries will be Dutch Rio 2016 Olympic bronze medal and 2013 FIVB world champions Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen.
Brouwer and Meeuwsen captured last week's FIVB World Tour event in Qatar as the Dutch pair rebounded from a pool play setback in Doha to post five straight match wins highlighted by a 2-1 (20-22, 21-14, 15-11) gold medal win in 46 minutes over Oleg Stoyanovskiy/Igor Velichko of Russia.
The Netherlands' Robert Meeuwsen (left) and Alexander Brouwer show off their Doha gold medals
Following this week’s stops in Oman and the Netherlands, the FIVB World Tour will resume on April 8-11 in Satun, Thailand, for a combined men’s and women’s event.