Azerbaijan's Karimova/Ferreira reach women's main draw at Fuzhou Open

Azerbaijan's Iuliia Karimova/Raquel Goncalves Ferreira progressed to the 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball Fuzhou Open main draw in only their third major tournament.

Karimova/Ferreira dug deep to finally beat Germany's Victoria Bieneck/Yanina Weiland in their second round qualification match 2-1 (21-14, 19-21, 21-19). The morning had swung in the Azerbaijan team's favor after an unfortunate withdrawal from Anna Behlen/Katharina Culav from Germany in the first round.

"I'm happy because for us it's only our third big tournament and I want to give big thanks to my partner because she helped me a lot," said Karimova.

"It was a tight match from the beginning to the end. The first game started with a little bit more wind so we got ourselves a little ahead, but it was still really tight the entire match. It took a lot of concentration and strategy and like Iuliia said we're really, really happy. This is really big for us coming on our third tournament together and playing well," said Ferreira.

The team began testing the beach volleyball waters last year, with Karimova making the transition from indoor volleyball.

"We always have high hopes and expectations. We were training really hard for two months before we came here and our first goal is one step at a time. Of course one match at a time is to qualify and now going to the main draw, we expect to start doing well in the main draw. For Iuliia it's her first real year beach volleyball, she came from indoor, so even though she is changing platforms, we are still expecting to win and go really well and be a very competitive team," said Ferreira.

USA's Summer Ross/Jennifer Fopma entered the qualification tournament as top seeds and the only team of the day to have earned a bye directly into the second round, where they faced Sophie van Gestel/Jantine van der Vlist from the Netherlands.

Van Gestel/van der Vlist are experienced on the world tour with van Gestel just missing out on the bronze medal in Fuzhou last year. The Dutch pair play together for the first time in 2015.

The US team proved their position as the highest ranked pair taking the match 2-0 (21-19, 21-18) with Summer's ability to find the space and strong blocking and defence by Fopma.

"We're feeling really excited. We're the only team that didn't have a first match so we didn't really get to warm up and we sat all day, so I think we were really nervous," said Fopma.

"I'm super happy. I was so ready to play, yes I was a little nervous, but we've been practicing for three days so I just wanted to play a match. I knew they were a really good ball control team, so I knew they would be trouble," said Ross.

"We knew that they were both really good, really big hitters, so we knew it would be a really big battle and it was," said Fopma.

Summer/Fopma are a new partnership in 2015 and are enjoying the journey.

"It's great, I mean we're a new team, but I'm loving it. I've never really played like this with all the energy," said Ross.

"I think we have a good chemistry. I'm pretty fiery when I play and Summer is quiet, but I think I pull out a lot of fire in her, so it's kind of fun back and forth," said Fopma.

In its third consecutive year, the FIVB Fuzhou Open is the first double-gender FIVB Open event of the 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar with a prize purse of 150,000 U.S. dollars.

The gold medal teams in each gender at the FIVB Fuzhou Open will each split 11,000 dollars, the silver 8,000 dollars, the bronze 6,000 dollars and fourth place 4,500 dollars. The men's medal matches will be held on Saturday and the women's medal matches will be held on Sunday. Endi