Shanghai, China, May 3, 2011 — Surviving three rounds of Qualification Tournament matches on Tuesday, teams from Germany, Estonia, Sweden, Canada, Great Britain, France, USA and Poland advanced to the field for the 32-team men’s Main Draw competition of the 2011 FIVB Beach Volleyball Swatch World Tour Shanghai Jinshan Open.

Sebastian Dollinger and Stefan Windscheif of Germany, who needed a country quota victory on Monday to enter the qualification tournament, continued with two straight wins to improve to a 3-0 record at the Shanghai Jinshan Open.

“They are a very good team, but we have better blocks and play much tougher,” said Dollinger after the hard-fought 21-19, 19-21 and 15-12 victory against Norway’s Iver Horem/Oivind Hordvik in the decisive final round qualifying match.

Seeded third in the 45-team qualification tournament, Frenchmen Kevin and Andy Ces also entered Wednesday’s Main Draw after winning both of their matches on Tuesday, eliminating Jon Stiekema/Christiaan Varenhorst of the Netherlands 21-16, 21-18 and Turkey’s Volkan Gogtepe/Selcuk Sekerci 21-19 and 21-17.

“It’s a good match, and the Turkish team played really tough, but we made more saves and I think that’s the key to our victory,” said Andy.

Great Britain’s John Garcia-Thompson/Steven Grotowski (32nd) emerged as surprise winners on Tuesday as they eliminated three teams in a row including Latvia’s Aleksandrs Samoilous/Sorokins Ruslans, top seeds of the Qualification Tournament, for a Main Draw ticket.

Also moving into Wednesday’s Main Draw competition are Casey Jennings/Kewin Wong of the United States (second), Sweden’s Stefan Gunnarsson/Hannes Brinkborg (ninth), Karl Jaani/Rivo Vesik of Estonia (fifth), Canadian duo Christian Redmann/Ben Saxton (11th) and Polish tandem Michal Kadziola/Jakub Szalankiewicz(7th).

Featuring reigning Olympic champions Phil Dalhausser/Todd Rogers of the United States, who won nine gold medals on last year's FIVB Beach Volleyball Swatch World Tour, Brazilian duo Alison Cerutti/Emanuel Rego, runners-up to Dalhausser/Rogers in the season opening Brasilia Open, and home favorites Wu Penggen/Xu Linyin, the men’s Main Draw tournament will kick off Wednsday morning with the final scheduled for Saturday.

The gold medal teams for the US$380,000 Shanghai Jinshan Open will split US$30,000, the silver US$21,000 and the bronze US$15,000.

The tournament is the second of 12 double-gender events on the 2011 FIVB Beach Volleyball Swatch World Tour, which also includes three single-gender events for women along with two single-gender events for men and a special 24-team Olympic test even in London August 9-14.

The women's competition of the Shanghai Jinshan Open will also continue on Wednesday with the Qualification Tournament.