While the 11th-seeded Alison and Andre Loyola won their Pool F match this morning against Canada to secure a first-round "bye", Bruno and his 12th-seeded partner Pedro Solberg had to play in the opening elimination round in Pool E contests.

With Cerutti and Loyola watching, Schmidt and Solberg excelled their ranking to defeat fourth seeds Adrian Gavira and Pablo Herrera of Spain 21-16, 21-16 to secure a spot in tomorrow’s schedule at the third of four Beach Major Series events on the 2017-2018 International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) World Tour calendar.

In the women’s competition two Brazilian pairs will meet teams from the Czech Republic and The Netherlands in tomorrow morning’s semi-finals, ahead of the afternoon’s gold medal match.

Fourth-seeded Fernanda Alves and Barbara Seixas and 10th-seeded Maria Antonelli and Carolina Salgado are scheduled to meet 16th-seeded European champions Sanne Keizer and Madelein Meppelink of The Netherlands and seventh-seeded Barbora Hermannova and Marketa Slukova of the Czech Republic, respectively.

"The Spanish are one the teams playing the best volleyball right now and it was a big win for us," said Schmidt after his match.

""We had a weird start in the tournament as we just got stuck in our problems and didn’t play the way we should.

"I’m not playing at my best level for a number of reasons and Pedro has been a fantastic partner.

"He made me play much better today and we’re trying to overcome the obstacles we have right now."

In the only previous meeting between these two Brazilian teams, Cerutti and Loyola earned a  21-17, 17-21, 17-15 win in pool play match at the Warsaw Open in June.

"Playing against other Brazilian teams is always a battle," Schmidt added.

"Alison and Andre have been playing really well, they have a lot of power and we respect that a lot.

"We’ll just keep focusing on our game and hopefully we can keep improving."

Two other teams from Brazil won opening elimination matches this afternoon - 10th-seeded Vitor Felipe and Evandro Goncalves and 21st-seeded qualifiers Gustavo "Guto" Carvalhaes and Ricardo Santos.

Goncalves was involved with the late May partner-switch as he was playing with Loyola, his gold medal partner at the 2017 FIVB World Championships in Vienna.

Other teams winning their elimination matches were top-seeded Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena of the United States, eighth-seeded home pairing Clemens Doppler and Alexander Horst, 14th-seeded Michal Bryl and Grzegorz Fijalek of Poland, 19th-seeded Ilya Leshukov and Konstantin Semenov of Russia and another home pairing, 31st-seeded Martin Ermacora and Moritz Pristauz-Telsnigg.

Antonelli and Salgado secured the first women’s semi-final berth for Brazil by defeating 17th-seeded qualifiers Kelley Larsen and Emily Stockman of the United States 21-14, 21-17, while Alves and Seixas beat Agatha Bednarczuk and Eduarda Santos Lisboa 15-21. 21-18, 15-11.

Hermannova and Slukova won their quarter-final against Sara Hughes and Summer Ross of the United States 21-19, 21-19 and Keizer and Meppelink beat Germany’s Victoria Bieneck and Isabel Schneiider 21-19, 21-18 in their last eight match.