The Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals put an end to the outstanding 2015 season, or at least to its most competitive part, this weekend in Fort Lauderdale, USA. With the 2015 World Tour title in their hands and out of the equation already, the Brazilians Alison Cerutti and Bruno Oscar Schmidt appeared on court once more to demonstrate their supremacy and to grab the record-high ($ 100 000) winning share.
Planned as the climax of the season, the Finals was an innovation by FIVB that had been long in cockpit but finally realized “in production” in 2015. It overlapped with the return of Swatch, the Swiss brand, as an FIVB strategic partner and also served as the last event of the highly successful Swatch Major Series. The Finals in Fort Lauderdale, the third US stop on the circuit in 2015, were not only attractive in terms of prestige and ranking points but also with regards to the largest prize money offered in international beach volleyball history, as well as the technology employed at the event. 19 on-site cameras, including high-speed cameras which provide ultra-slow-motion replays for the audience and TV viewers, new virtual graphics overlaid onto the tournament’s live feed that transmitted information about temperature, humidity, wind speed, and wind direction, graphics that gave fans details on the jump height of athletes approaching the net for a spike or a block, and cable cam which displayed bird’s eye views of the court, stands, and play were all state-of-the-art assets. Last but not least, this was the second event at which the modern Challenge system, applying the Hawkeye technology, was introduced, following the first test at the Rio Open earlier on this season. The system has been used in indoor volleyball more and more extensively, thus making it necessary to emerge in beach volleyball too.
There was a change, however, in the way FIVB planned the Swatch World Tour Finals. Fort Lauderdale was originally thought to welcome the world’s top eight point leaders, which in September, when the process was completed, were Alison-Bruno (1, Brazil), Pedro-Evandro (2, Brazil), Brouwer-Meeuwsen (3, Netherlands), Nummerdor-Varenhorst (4, Netherlands), Gibb-Patterson (5, USA), Herrera-Gavira (6, Spain), Doppler-Horst (7, Austria), Saxton-Schalk (8, Canada). Points for all FIVB World Tour events were used to determine the top eight spots for the Finals with a maximum of two teams per country. The organizers decided to extend the invitations to ten by granting wild cards to two teams. The newly formed, and quite successful recently, home representatives Lucena-Dalhausser, as well as the spectacular Italians Ranghieri-Carambula were selected due to their performances at the World Tour, with the Italians especially impressive at the Swatch Major Series. A swap was necessary after announcing the last two berths as Ranghieri-Carambula declined participation in Fort Lauderdale and were thus replaced by compatriots Nicolai-Lupo.
The competition formula allowed fans and teams to enjoy the beach volleyball festival further by providing more matches between the ten participating twosomes. Two groups of five teams comprised the main round. The winners of each advanced directly to the semifinals, whereas the runner-ups and third-placed ones met in “crossed” quarterfinal playoffs.
Much to the crowd’s enthusiasm, the wild-card entries Lucena-Dalhausser turned out to be the pleasant surprise of the Finals. Seeded tenth, last week’s Xiamen Open winners won all four matches in the preliminary Pool B, including a three-set victory against the second-seeded tournament favourites Alison-Bruno (18-21, 21-16, 15-11). They accustomed better to the scorching weather conditions. This gave the Americans enough confidence to overcome the Dutchmen Brouwer-Meeuwsen in a tight semifinal encounter (21-18, 19-21, 15-12). The gold medal match, as it turned out, was a repetition of the Long Beach Grand Slam final and a chance for Alison Cerutti and Bruno Oscar Schmidt to bounce back and win their sixth trophy on the World Tour.
Alison-Bruno were lucky to play at normal conditions on Sunday. There was no sign of the heat and humidity that helped Lucena-Dalhausser come back in the group stage game on Wednesday, four days earlier. Great defence, powerful smashes and serves were again the keys to the Brazilian victory. The gold medal match was much faster than what the crowd and the TV viewers expected (21-13, 21-15). The performance of the veteran Americans, on the other side, was not as sparkling as it had been throughout the whole week.
“I give them the credit – they played amazingly, especially in the tiebreak,” Bruno Oscar Schmidt said of the first meeting. “But in the end of the second set the humidity and the heat were insane that day. Today was so much fresher. We know when we play against Phil, we need to start strong. That was our mentality today.” The Best Spiker at the World Championship also added on their triumph and the great season overall: “When you have a relationship, you like to separate things inside the court and outside the court. When you try to be stronger, more together, try to help each other even more than yourself, things just happen for you. When you act like this, you take more advantage of everything, especially in tournaments like this.”
“That’s what top teams do,” Nicholas Lucena said. “They’re a top team and they did a good job. I didn’t pass that well, we couldn’t run our system and they took advantage of that. They sided out really well.”
“We came out kind of flat and could never really work our way out of it,” Dalhausser said. “Just from the very first point they showed why they’re the best team in the world. They played greatly.”
The bronze medal match saw another Brazilian pair in a demolition mode. Although slightly more balanced, the battle between Pedro Salgado and Evandro Goncalves, bronze medalists from the World Championship in the Netherlands, and Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen was partially one-sided (21-19, 21-14). It was a perfect opportunity for Pedro-Evandro to finish the tournament with a win, following the disappointing loss to fellow Brazilians Alison-Bruno (17-21, 21-23) on Saturday.
“I am very happy. I was really sad yesterday when we lost in the semifinals. It really hurt,” Pedro said. “We wanted so much to make the final, but it’s part of the game, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.”
