Vienna, Austria, July 28, 2017 - Led by the United States,12 countries were winners here Friday during the opening day of play in the 2017 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships with 15 matches remaining on the schedule during the first of six sessions of pool play.
Fifth-seeded Summer Ross/Brooke Sweat and 16th-seeded Kelly Claes/Sara Hughes posted American women's wins over pairs from Austria and Canada. In "Summer Sweat's" Pool E, 29th-seeded Tatyana Mashkova and Bakhtygul Samalikova of Kazakhstan (29) posted the first upset win Friday by defeating 20th-seeded Valentyna Davidova/Ievgeniia Shchypkova of the Ukraine 2-0 (21-18, 21-16) in 34 minutes.
On the men's side, the opening center court matches proved the most exciting as fourth-seeded Evandro Goncalves and Andre Loyola of Brazil avoided the upset bid by Maarten van Garderen and Christiaan Varenhorst by defeating the Dutch team 2-1 (20-22, 23-21, 15-7) in 57 minutes.
Evandro won the bronze medal at the 2015 FIVB World Championships in the Netherlands with Pedro Solberg while Varenhorst and Reinder Nummerdor finished second after losing the gold medal match to Alison Cerutti and Bruno Oscar Schmidt of Brazil.
In another match early Friday, seventh-seeded Melissa Humana-Paredes/Sarah Pavan of Canada defeated Manon Nummerdor-Flier/Marleen Van Iersel of the Netherlands 2-0 (21-13, 23-21) in 33 minutes.