The top seeds beat Summer Ross and Lane Carico 21-15, 19-21, 15-8 in the second round of elimination and then overcame Lauren Fendrick and Brooke Sweat 21-14, 21-18 in the quarter-finals.

Next up for Walsh Jennings and Ross are Germany’s Chantal Laboureur and Julia Sude, the number five seeds who defeated Japanese surprise package Miki Ishii and Megumi Murakami 21-13, 21-16 to reach the last four.

"This tour is so deep and I’m really happy that it’s here in Long Beach for people to see that it’s not just Brazil and the USA," Walsh Jennings said.

"The world is rad and I think this is enlightening to a lot of people."

The other semi-final pits number seven seeds Liliana Fernández and Elsa Baquerizo of Spain against Germany’s Katrin Holtwick and Ilka Semmler.

Holtwick and Semmler advanced to the penultimate stage with a 21-19, 16-21, 15-9 win over compatriots Britta Buthe and Karla Borger, while Fernández and Baquerizo pulled off a shock 21-17, 21-18 victory over second seeds Talita Antunes and Larissa Franca of Brazil.

In the men’s event, 20^th seeds Alex Rangheiri and Marco Caminati of Italy won two knock-out round ties to progress through to tomorrow’s quarter-finals.

Caminati was stepping in for Rangheiri’s regular team-mate Adrian Carambula, who was unable to make the trip to the United States.

The pair, who won the gold medal at last year’s FIVB Lucerne Open, defeated Switzerland’s Jonas Kissling and Marco Krattiger 21-14, 22-20 before coming from behind to upset 10^th seeds Mariusz Prudel and Grzegorz Fijalek of Poland thanks to a 16-21, 21-15, 15-13 success.

"We really played well today, especially against the Polish team," said Rangheiri.

"They are a veteran FIVB World Tour team and we have played together on the tour since over a year ago.

"We played hard and good things can happen when you play like we have today."

Awaiting Rangheiri and Caminati in the last eight are Poland’s Michal Bryl and Kacper Kujawiak, who were the only other team that made it through two elimination matches.

The number 21 seeds firstly overcame the US’s Trevor and Taylor Crabb 15-21, 21-19, 15-13 and then defeated Russia’s Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Artem Yarzutkin 25-23, 18-21, 19-17

The other six quarter-finalists all earned first-round byes for winning their pools yesterday. 

Among them are top seeds Nick Lucena and Phil Dalhausser after they beat Canada’s Josh Binstock and Sam Schachter 21-14, 21-15.