Americans Dalhausser and Lucena top their pool in Fort Lauderdale

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida, USA, March 1, 2018 – One team from United States and two teams from Brazil captured pool titles here on Thursday at the $600,000 Fort Lauderdale Major where pairs from Italy, Poland, Russia and Spain secured the top spot in their groups at the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour event at Fort Lauderdale Beach Park.

Rio 2016 Olympic champions Alison Cerutti/Bruno Oscar Schmidt of Brazil and 2017 Swatch Beach Volleyball FIVB World Tour Finals winners Phil Dalhausser/Nick Lucena head the list of eight pool winners.

Seeded first in Pool A, the top-seeded Dalhausser and Lucena captured Pool A by defeating 17th-seeded Grant O'Gorman/Ben Saxton of Canada 2-0 (21-15, 21-16) in 33 minutes to conclude Thursday’s 32-match schedule. The Americans also played in Wednesday’s last match defeating a team from Norway in two sets.

Alison and Bruno captured Pool F as the sixth-seeded Brazilians posted a 2-0 (21-18, 21-18) win in 38 minutes over 11th-seeded Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen of the Netherlands.

Joining Alison and Bruno as the other Brazilian pool winner were ninth-seeded Pedro Solberg and George Wanderley, who posted a Pool H win over eighth-seeded Martins Plavins and Edgars Tocs of Latvia 2-1 (21-12, 17-21, 19-17) in 49 minutes. The Latvians had placed first and second in their first two FIVB events this season at World Tour stops in the Netherlands and Iran, respectively.

Other group winners on Thursday were third-seeded Piotr Kantor/Bartosz Losiak of Poland (Pool C), fifth-seeded Daniele Lupo/Paolo Nicolai of Italy (Pool E), 13th-seeded Adrian Gavira/Pablo Herrera of Spain (Pool D) and 23rd-seeded Oleg Stoyanovskiy/Igor Velichko of Russia (Pool G).