Members of the Qatar teams with their coach Pedro Paulo Costa on the eve of the 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball Doha Open.

By Sports Reporter/Doha
 

Tim Holler and Jonas Schreiber will be out to repeat their heroics of last year when the 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball Doha Open begins today at the Al Gharafa Stadium.
The tournament is the final Open of 2015 and the last World Tour tournament of the year. It is the second time Doha is hosting the tournament and it will run November 9-13.
Qatar has fielded two teams — Jefferson Parreira-Cherif Younnouse and Mahmoud Assam-Ahmad Tijan — in the tournament, which was originally scheduled to be held from November 17 to 21.
It was brought forward as per the request of the Qatar Volleyball Association (QVA) which wanted it to finish one week earlier and on a Friday.
“It’s for the second year in a row that we’re hosting the FIVB event. The QVA has an agreement with FIVB to host the World Tour event till 2016. We’re even exploring the option of hosting a Grand Slam event in future,” said QVA general secretary Mohamed Ali al-Mohannadi.
In 2014, the German pair Tim Holler and Jonas Schreiber won their only gold medal of the World Tour after they went from the qualifiers all the way to the top of the podium, defeating Canada’s Joshua Binstock and Sam Schachter in the gold medal match.
Since then their best result was a quarter-final finish at the Antalya Open in Turkey and this year they have been put straight in to the main draw. Standing in their way are the formidable pairing of former Olympic champions Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena, who will aim to continue the strong start to their partnership.
The American duo teamed up earlier in 2015 and has already enjoyed some notable success on the World Tour.
They began with silver at the Long Beach Grand Slam, added another silver at the Sochi Open and then won their first gold together at the Xiamen Open. Since then the Americans have won silver at the World Tour Finals and another gold at the Puerto Vallarta Open.
Adrian Carambula and Alex Ranghieri are likely to push them hard for the right to top the podium. The Italians have enjoyed a stellar 2015 season and they go into the tournament in great form having won gold at the most recent tournament, the Antalya Open.
Another podium finish would cap the duo’s breakthrough year which began by them winning gold at the inaugural Lucerne Open in May.
Edouard Rowlandson and Youssef Krou will aim to add to the bronze medals they won in 2014. The French pair have not yet enjoyed the same consistency that they enjoyed last year, but they will be aiming to end the year as they started it, with a place on the podium having won bronze in the season-opening Fuzhou Open in China.