SAQUAREMA, Brazil — They’re still the kings, Andre Loyola and George Wanderley.
No, they may not have performed up to their lofty — especially when playing at home in Brazil — standards last weekend in Recife for the first Challenge of the season. A ninth was a puzzler, even if it included just a single loss in the tournament. And in reality, it was that ninth, their worst finish in Brazil since 2019, that made for a number of their opponents on the Beach Pro Tour point to George and Andre as favorites to win gold this past weekend in Saquarema.
You simply cannot hold down George and Andre in Brazil for long.
While the Beach Pro Tour is not scheduled to stop in Itapema this year, where Andre and George have won three straight, it doesn’t much matter. It is difficult to overstate the advantage that comes with playing at home when you’re a Brazilian team. In Recife, it was Evandro Goncalves and Arthur Mariano who took gold. It marked the second gold medal of their partnership.
There first came a year ago, in Saquarema.
“Special” is how Evandro described playing at home.
It is easy to see why.
Just as Evandro and Arthur did in Recife, George and Andre took the long route to the finals at the Saquarema Challenge. As Evandro and Arthur did in Recife, George and Andre lost their first match of pool, to Swiss qualifiers Marco Krattiger and Florian Breer, a stunner not necessarily in the simple matter of losing, but in how they lost. Krattiger and Breer walked all over the Brazilians 21-17, 21-12, stumping them with consistent side-out, frustrating them defensively.
They would be the last team to do so.
The remaining six matches became a tour de force for Andre and George. They knocked out Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner in pool (21-14, 21-19), made quick work of Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk in the first round (21-13, 21-17), swept Vinicius Rezende and Heitor Barbosa (21-16, 21-18), then knocked out the final American team standing, Chase Budinger and Miles Evans (21-17, 21-13), to push back into the semifinals. France’s Julian Lyneel and Remi Bassereau, wild cards on a scintillating run of their own, offered some resistance, claiming the first set, 21-14, before falling in the next two, 18-21, 12-15. France would recover from its lone loss well, beating Austria’s Phillipp Waller and Martin Ermacora for bronze (21-15, 16-21, 15-12).
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