Tokyo, Japan, July 25, 2018 – Turkey’s Hasan Huseyin Mermer and Safa Urlu value participating in as many FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour events as possible as they aim to progress rapidly in the sport.
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The Turkish duo ended their stint at the Haiyang 3-star event in China last week with a ninth place. Their goal is to improve on that at the Tokyo 3-star event this week.
“We are enjoying our time here in Tokyo,” Urlu said. “We like it a lot here and we want to earn a better position in Tokyo from our ninth place finish in Haiyang.”
“We are targeting the fifth position here,” Mermer added. “We need to earn more points. We are so hungry for it and we want it badly.”
This season, Turkey has hosted two 1-star World Tour events in Aydin and Alanya, and a 3-star event in Mersin. The European nation is also hosting a 1-star event in Samsun from July 26 to 29.
The abundance of events in the country is helping to develop the sport and is creating new opportunities for players.
“Turkish beach volleyball is developing especially with the many World Tour events our country has hosted this season,” Mermer said. “We have hosted two 1-star events and one 3-star event. There’s one more 1-star event coming up.”
Mermer and Urlu qualified for the main draw in Tokyo by beating Japan’s Masakatsu Onodera and Daisuke Shibata in the qualification round. The pair feels that they are reaping the benefits of their hard work.
“We’ve been playing together for four years now,” Urlu said. “We have played in age-group competitions in Europe and the highest that we reached was fifth. We were not very experienced at the time but we learned a lot from it.
“We are happy that we’ve won our qualification match and we hope to win tomorrow and the succeeding matches.”