Tri Bourne, Chaim Schalk come back to qualify for Recife Challenge

RECIFE, Brazil — Amid the delirium and the jubilation on one side of the net and the solemn-faced, thousand-mile stare of dejection on the other, there came a cackle from just off court four at the Recife Challenge in Brazil.

Aleksandrs Samoilovs, who had qualified for the main draw of the Recife Challenge moments prior alongside his brother, Mihails, couldn’t stop laughing. While Chaim Schalk knew exactly what it meant when Tri Bourne hit an ace at 21-20 in the second set against France’s Olivier Barthelemy and Samuel Cattet, Bourne, as he is well-known for at this point, had no idea.

Had no idea he just clinched a 21-15, 22-20 win. No idea he and Schalk just qualified for their first main draw of the season.

Amid all of the emotion, coming all the way back from down 5-9 and 15-18, he simply marched back to the service line, prepared to rip another. Samoilovs loved it.

“He wanted to win by three!” the Latvian blocker said, laughing and shaking his head.

No need for more serves. No need for an additional point. Not on Thursday night, anyway. He and Schalk will need more of those serves this weekend as they enter Pool C, matching up with Austria’s Julian Horl and Alex Horst. They will meet either Brazil’s Evandro Goncalves and Arthur Mariano or Argentina’s Nicolas Capogrosso and Tomas Capogrosso in the second round.

Neither Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner nor Chase Budinger and Miles Evans required such theatrics to be playing into the weekend. Both were seeded directly in the main draw. Brunner and Crabb will play the Samoilovs brothers and meet either Spain’s Adrian Gavira and Pablo Herrera or Austria’s Moritz Pristauz and Robin Seidl. Budinger and Evans match up with the Netherlands’ Leon Luini and Christiaan Varenhorst and will play either Ukraine’s Sergiy Popov and Eduard Reznik or Australia’s Izac Carracher and Mark Nicolaidis in the second round.

And that is, astonishingly, that, for the USA federation.

USA women miss on main draw for first time

For the first time since the advent of the Elite16-Challenge-Futures system in 2022, there is not a single American women’s team in the main draw of a Challenge or Elite16 event. All three teams — Savvy Simo and Toni Rodriguez, Brooke Sweat and Kennedy Coakley, Kim Hildreth and Teegan Van Gunst — fell in Thursday’s qualifier.

Simo and Rodriguez’s upset bid against Brazil’s Hegeile Almeida and Vitoria De Souza fell short (23-25, 11-21) as did Sweat and Coakley’s against Slovenia’s Tjasa Kotnik and Tajda Lovsin (17-21, 14-21). And it was Kotnik and Lovsin who then felled Hildreth and Van Gunst in the next round, 24-22, 21-9, making the weekend the first American-free main draw for the women.

Like Hildreth and Van Gunst, Hagen Smith and Logan Webber fell in the final round, to a new Swiss pair in Jonathan Jordan and Quentin Metral. It was an odd meeting matchup in the final round, the 21st-seeded Swiss vs. the 28th-seeded Americans, a meeting kudos to two sizable upsets in the first round. Smith and Webber notched arguably the finest win of their partnership in their 21-18, 21-17 win over Chile’s Marco Grimalt and Esteban Grimalt, the current world No. 24 and two-time Olympians. Meanwhile, Jordan and Metral, in their first Beach Pro Tour event as partners, stunned fellow Swiss Adrian Heidrich and Leo Dillier (21-16, 19-21, 20-18). So began the battle of the underdogs, one taken decisively by Switzerland, 21-11, 24-22, rendering Smith and Webber tourists in Brazil until next week’s Challenge in Saquarema.

Notable results from the Recife Challenge qualifier

• Samoilovs brothers win the battle(s) of the brothers: Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Mihails Samoilovs won the battle of brothers on Thursday — twice. They knocked off France’s Aye brothers, Quincy and Calvin, in the first round, before felling Spain’s Huerta brothers, Javier and Alejandro, in the second.
• Welcome back, Christiaan Varenhorst: One of the biggest arms on Tour, the 6-foot-11 Varenhorst played just three events in 2023, all in July, a blink of a season that concluded at the Montreal Elite16. In his first of 2024, he qualified with Leon Luini.
• Marco Krattiger, Florian Breer land big win: Switzerland’s top pair came tantalizingly close to qualifying for the Doha Elite16 two weeks ago, losing in the final round to Australia’s Zachery Schubert and Thomas Hodges in three. Down 10-13 in the second set of the second round to Brazil’s Adrielson Dos Santos and Arthur da Silva, Krattiger left little up to chance, blocking six balls in the final 14 points to win, 21-18, 21-16 and advance into the main draw.
• Heather Bansley, Sophie Bukovec last Canadian pair remaining: Bansley and Bukovec swept both of their qualifier matches on Thursday to move onto the main draw, where they are the only Canadian women’s team, a critical fact in an airtight Olympic race. The top Canadian spot has been locked up by Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson, but both Sarah Pavan and Molly McBain and Bansley and Bukovec remain in the hunt to qualify for the Paris Olympics via points. A high finish — fifth or above — in Recife would be a boon for Bukovec and Bansley.