BEIJING: Americans Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers overcame a 6-0 deficit in the final set to beat Switzerland 21-16, 21-23, 15-13 yesterday to advance to the Olympic beach volleyball quarterfinals.
The reigning world champions and heavy favorites to win the gold medal in their Olympic debuts, Rogers and Dalhausser took an easy first set before giving away the second with mental mistakes and mis-hits.
In the third set Martin Laciga and Jan Schnider scored the first six points for lead that even the Americans thought might be insurmountable. Dalhausser was born in Switzerland and speaks German at home with his mother.
“I still can’t believe that we came back and won that match,” said Dalhausser. “At no point did I quit,” said Rogers, who once won a match on the domestic pro tour after trailing 13-7 in the third. “But I was thinking it would be a pretty gnarly comeback — if we make the comeback.”
The Americans got a sideout, then Rogers made a nice scoop save to make it 6-2. The Swiss called timeout, but it didn’t change the momentum and soon it was 6-5, and 7-7. “It’s still unclear. I don’t even know what happened,” Laciga said. “I saw myself leading 9-4, 10-6, 11-8. You look at the score, it was 6-0, and now it’s 7-all, it’s hard to believe even now.”
It was 10-10 when the Americans scored three straight points and held on to win for the third straight time since opening the tournament by losing to the No. 23 team from Latvia in pool play.
In other matches yesterday, the German team of David Klemperer and Eric Koreng knocked the crowd favorite Wu Penggen and Xu Linyin out of the tournament with a 21-15, 21-18 victory.
