Phuket, Thailand, November 5, 2009 - After the posting of the seeds for this week's SWATCH FIVB World Tour event on Karon Beach, the Beach Volleyball followers figured that the gold medal participants at last week's international stop in China would face each other in the third-round of the winner's bracket at the US$190,000 Phuket Thailand Open powered by PTT.

Instead, only one of the final two teams from Sanya advanced as expected as Switzerland's Simone Kuhn and Nadine Zumkehr were upset in the second-round of the winner's bracket here Thursday afternoon by 24th-seeded Ying Huang and Xi Zhang of China 21-11, 11-21 and 20-18 in 50 minutes in the first meeting this season between the two teams.

Top-seeded Jen Kessy and April Ross, the defending Phuket Thailand Open champions, advanced as expected as the reigning world champions from the United States will now play the 17-year old Huang and Zhang in an opening winner's bracket match Friday.

Zhang, the bronze medal winner at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and Huang joined Kessy and Ross in defeating teams from Thailand in Wednesday's opening round as the Americans advanced unbeaten to Friday's play with a 21-17 and 21-14 victory in 42 minutes over 16th-seeded Marie-Andree Lessard and Annie Martin of Canada.

Kessy and Ross, who dropped last week's finale in China to Kuhn and Zumkehr in three-sets, won the 2008 Sanya stop by defeating Huang and Zhang 21-17 and 23-21 in the gold medal match.

Six other teams advanced unbeaten to Friday's competition led by two teams each from The Netherlands and Russia along with pairs from Spain and the United States.

The undefeated Dutch tandems of fourth-seeded Sanne Keizer and Marleen Van Iersel and the qualifying pair of 12th-seeded Danielle Remmers and Sophie van Gestel will play each other in an opening match Friday with the winner advancing to the quarter-finals against either Kessy/Ross or Huang/Zhang. The Russian unbeatens are 22nd-seeded Maria Bratkova/Evgenia Ukolova and 23rd-seeded qualifier Ekaterina Khomyakova/Anastasia Vasina.

Other teams with 2-0 match marks are second-seeded Angie Akers/Tyra Turner of the United States and 30th-seeded qualifiers Elsa Baquerizo/Liliana Fernandez Steiner of Spain. With ninth-place guaranteed, Elsa and Liliana will post their best SWATCH FIVB World Tour finish together to better a 13th earlier this year in Poland.

Sixteen other teams remain in the double-elimination competition with one defeat each, including the third-, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-seeded teams.