Men to battle in epic elimination round tonight

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Can the Italians overcome the Americans and make the second round? Photocredit: Daniel Gollner.

Pool Play for the men is over! And now the temperature on court will soar even higher at the Poreč Major because it’s knockout time!

Three Brazilian teams surfed their way seamlessly through in the second round of elimination with Alison/Bruno, Guto/Saymon and Pedro Solberg/Evandro dominating on Friday morning.

They were joined in the last 16 by Lucena/Dalhausser and Gibb/Patterson of the US, as well as Samoilovs/Smedins of Latvia, Saxton/Schalk of Canada and Spain’s Herrera/Gavira.

There will be plenty of drama in the first round of elimination, however, with a field packed of star names. As well as three hugely popular Austrian teams, there will also be Ranghieri/Carambula of Italy, last year’s winners Brouwer/Meeuwsen and two teams from Brazil – Ricardo/Andre and Álvaro/Vitor Filipe.

And the first round draw has served up some mouthwatering matches that round off a fantastic Friday later this evening.

In the pick of the matches, it’s America versus Italy as Bourne/Hyden take on Ranghieri/Carambula, while Brouwer/Meeuwsen will have to beat Brazil’s Álvaro/Vitor Filipe if they want to be on the podium again here like they were last year.

All three remaining Austrian men – Doppler/Horst, Huber/Seidl and Kunert/Dressler face tricky tests but – with two of these matches on Center Court – the passion and noise of their fans will act like a third man on the sand.

Click here for a round-down of the draw and don’t forget to check out our live stream as we’ll be covering every single match live on our website!

Alison/Bruno don’t have to worry about a first round match – they’re already through. Photocredit: Daniel Gollner.

In the final matches of the Pool Play we also had this thrilling rally between Alison/Bruno Schmidt and Ranghieri/Carambula. Watch it below from our official YouTube channel.