We countdown our top five moments from the first tournament of the season

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There was no stopping Saymon Barbosa at the Fort Lauderdale Major. Photocredit: Mihai Stetcu.

In an ideal world, our top story would be the fact that it was the first tournament of the year and that beach volleyball is, finally, back on the sand for the new season.

But we really can’t use that as an excuse for a ‘top moment’ – so how about we just say that our fifth favorite moment of the Fort Lauderdale Major was seeing all the stars back in action – particularly the raft of new teams who joined forces over the off-season. Oh how we missed them and beach volleyball.

It’s fair to say that the majority of new teams enjoyed their first international appearance of the new season together.

Of course for Alvaro/Saymon it couldn’t of got any better as the pair stormed to the top of the podium in the men’s competition having come through qualification AND a qualification tournament in Brazil two weeks prior.

In the men’s tournament, nine of the 16 teams which achieved top 10 finishes were new partnerships, while in the women’s competition 10 of the 16 top-ranked teams were making their debuts together as teammates. Talk about hitting the ground running.

However, when it came to winning medals, two of the three women’s teams that stood on the podium were familiar pairs – triumphant gold medalists Larissa/Talita of Brazil and bronze medalists from Germany Laboureur/Sude.

In the men’s tournament Florida favorites Lucena/Dalhausser clinched a bronze medal but there were plenty of encouraging signs from a host of new teams in the top 10, including Americans Gibb/Taylor Crabb and Canadians O’Gorman/Plantinga and Pedlow/Schachter.

For many of the stars it will be a while until they are in action again on the sand – the next Swatch Major Series stop isn’t until the Poreč Major at the end of June. That gives all the teams – old and new – time to work on their game ahead of the exciting summer season leading up to the World Championships in Vienna.