BEACH VOLLEYBALL : Top-Seeded Kiraly, Steffes Advance at Manhattan Beach

So far, so good for Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes.

The top-seeded pair on the pro volleyball tour, along with 13 of the other top 16 seeded players, advanced to the final 16 of the winners’ bracket Friday, the first day of the $100,000 Manhattan Beach Open at the Manhattan Beach Pier.

No. 8 Mark Eiler and Pat Powers lost to No. 25 Parker Blackman and Kevin Waterbury, 15-11; No. 14 Bill Boulliane and Leif Hanson lost to No. 19 Brian Gatzke and Jeff Rodgers, 15-10, and No. 16 Rudy Dvorak and Matt Sonnichsen lost to unseeded David Swatik and Canyon Ceman, 15-10.

All three teams are in the losers’ bracket.

Steffes and Kiraly, who have won their past seven tournaments, had no trouble with Tim Brown and Tommy Lee (15-3) or 32nd-seeded Peter Bigler and Sean DeLapp (15-0).

“The thing that amazes me is that for one of the opening rounds, they were as fired up as they were,” Bigler said.

The 16 winners’ bracket teams will resume play in the double-elimination tournament at 10 a.m. today. The losers’ bracket teams will start at 9 a.m.

Second-seeded Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos easily won both of their matches.

“No one is really challenging them (Steffes and Kiraly),” Stoklos said. “I think we have a great chance to do that. I feel great about the way we played today.”

The biggest surprise to make the final 16 in the winners’ bracket was the team of Swatik and Ceman, who made the field of 64 by winning a game in a single-elimination qualifying tournament.

Swatik, a sophomore on the UCLA volleyball team, and Ceman, a sophomore at Stanford, can’t accept money in the tournament because of NCAA regulations.

“We’ll just have to turn down $500,” Ceman said. “It’s a shame.”