So it’s really no accident that I’ve been whipping up posts mostly on the weekend. It’s when I’m around to watch events, sure, but it’s also when I’m not exhausted from work. (It’s also why I make so little progress on my screenwriting on weekdays!) That’s why this one is about as late as it can possibly be, with the Klagenfurt Grand Slam well underway.
I originally had a post written about Semifinal Saturday from Long Beach, with blow-by-blows of the semifinal matches. It was accidentally deleted, and that kind of soured me on doing a similar post on Sunday. As it happened, Sunday’s coverage was pretty spotty in the first place (I saw both gold finals, but none of the women’s bronze final and only the tailend of the men’s bronze final), so it wouldn’t have really worked anyway.
I saw quite a bit more of the Long Beach event than the ones in previous weeks, which is no surprise as it was in my same time zone. Centre court streams during pool play meant I saw every American team at least once. It was my first look at teams like John Hyden/Tri Bourne, Todd Rogers/Theodore Brunner, and Brittany Hochevar/Lane Carico, as well as again seeing the likes of April Ross/Kerri Walsh and Jake Gibb/Casey Patterson, and…well, you know who. (Okay, maybe I didn’t see every American team)
They all played solidly for the home fans. Hyden/Bourne are an interesting tandem. Neither is especially tall, neither a particularly imposing blocker, but they get the job done. They went out in round 2 of the knockout phase against the reigning world champs Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen (Brouwer/Meeuwsen subsequently went out in round 3). I’d be inclined to say their relative lack of size was what did them in, but they did beat taller opponents en route to their gold medal at the Berlin Grand Slam. So who really knows.
Rogers/Brunner played well over their heads, I don’t think there’s any denying that. They entered through the qualifier, played as the #25 seeds, and made it straight through to the semifinals. They claimed a few choice skins on their way there, knocking off Ricardo Alex Costa Santos/Álvaro Morais Filho and Pablo Herrera Allepuz/Adrián Gavira Collado in pool play and Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Janis Smedins in the knockout phase, all single-digit seeds. They lost in the semifinals to The Hague Grand Slam champs Grzegorz Fijalek/Mariusz Prudel, setting up a rematch between the Poles and the best team on the planet for Long Beach gold. Sean Rosenthal/Phil Dalhausser played up to their first seeds by winning that match, their third gold in the last four events, but the story had a nice ending for Rogers/Brunner as well. They took the bronze, defeating Alexander Walkenhorst/Stefan Windscheif to earn Rogers’ first medal since the split with Dalhausser two seasons ago.
And oh, Rogers/Dalhausser. They had an interesting event, too. All three of their pool play matches went the distance, though they did prevail in all three. You have to wonder if they were consciously going at 90% in those matches. You can’t really blame them if so. Their very manner of play is workmanlike, and it’s not cocky to say that they know in pool play that they’ve got a long tournament run ahead of them. They were also extended to three sets in their quarterfinal knockout match, but played a glorious two-set sweep against the aforementioned Germans Walkenhorst/Windscheif in the semis. They utterly dominated that match, Dalhausser in particular. He recorded either 8 or 9 blocks in the match, and very very nearly served out the match from 16-9 in set 2. He recorded aces left, middle, and right prior to the side change at 19-9, and then one more from the other side of the net. I hope he hit the poker table after 4 beautiful aces in a row. It was almost five — the 20-9 serve landed just inches long. The Germans gamely kept fighting and Walkenhorst even served up an ace of his own, but it was all over. Great match.
Then came the finals against Fijalek/Prudel. After a set, it looked, shockingly, like they were bound for their third straight loss to the diminutive Poles. They lost a tight 24-22 first set, but bounced back to win the second 21-17. You could feel them feeding off the energy of the ‘home’ fans (Phil’s actually from Florida, but you get the idea). The third set wasn’t competitive, as the Poles failed to crack double digits. As they explained in their post-match interview, the win was richly satisfying for a number of reasons — winning at home, a second straight Long Beach gold medal, beating their suddenly-archrivals for the first time in a while. They’ll carry that with them this week in Klagenfurt.
Over on the women’s side, I was interested to check out the Carico/Hochevar partnership. I’ve seen copious praise heaped upon Carico, but at the risk of sounding negative I just didn’t see much watching her play. She and Hochevar switch-blocked a bit (though not the strict 50/50 that Ross and Walsh did), and she looked overmatched at the net, both in blocking and hitting. Solid defender, though. At the risk of sounding even more negative, though, this is not a partnership I see lasting a long time. Hochevar’s an entertaining player — she makes any match watchable — but since her split with Lauren Fendrick I haven’t really gotten the sense that she’s anyone’s permanent (or at least, through 2016) partner. I’ll be interested to see more from this team in the future, as 2 matches isn’t much of a sample size.
Seeing centre court and a lot of the knockout phase gave me a good long look at Walsh/Ross. After three golds earlier in the season, they didn’t play on Sunday at all in the two previous events. Despite entering as the definite #1 seeds, they were also kind of on a downturn. But they did not play like it. They dropped just a single set over the entire course of the event, losing an 18-21 second set to Laura Ludwig/Julia Sude in the knockout quarterfinals. Everything else they won, and won handily. They did a 50/50 switch-block, as I mentioned above, and it was really the first time I could recall seeing Walsh play defence (she certainly never did it with Misty May). And she was outstanding. Tournament MVP beyond question.
Switch-blocking allowed the pair to always have someone positioned at the net to begin a rally, which is generally a more favourable position for a pair to be in. (I say generally because I’m pretty sure Rosenthal/Dalhausser are just fine when Phil has to scurry to the net after serving) I’ve sometimes wondered why we don’t see more teams do this, but really, it would take a team like Walsh/Ross to make it work. A team of two superlative talents, of about equal size (I think Kerri may have an inch on April). I didn’t quite catch it clearly, but I think Ross said in the post-tournament interview, after they beat Agatha Bednarczuk/Barbara Seixas De Freitas for the gold, that they went to the switch-block for this event because she wasn’t entirely at her best this week. And I imagine that’s probably true — I saw three or four of their matches but really don’t remember much of anything in particular that she did (not even at the service line, where she normally outshines everyone). I wonder if we’ll see this tactic from them going forward, and if it’ll still be the 50/50. Quite frankly — why not keep doing it?
Northern bias time, but I was of course also interested in how the Canadian teams would fare in this event. And the answer is not very well. On the men’s side, Chaim Schalk/Ben Saxton and Josh Binstock/Sam Schachter both made the knockout phase, the former with a win over the world champs and the latter coming out of the qualifiers, but they were both eliminated there. It may have been greedy to expect more, but I was certainly hoping for more. The women’s side was even worse, as the Jamie Lynn Broder/Kristina Valjas and Heather Bansley/Sarah Pavan teams were both swept out of pool play, with scores sufficiently non-competitive that I couldn’t help but speculate that someone may have been playing hurt. The utter loss of points actually forced Bansley/Pavan into the qualifier for the Klagenfurt event (where they succeeded, and are on the whole doing much better).
The bright spot, though, was the duo of Taylor Pischke/Melissa Humana-Paredes. I thought they played very well, especially for as young as they both are (both 21). They extended Hague Grand Slam champions Taiana Lima/Fernanda Alves to an extra-point second set and the aforementioned Ludwig/Sude tandem to a full three-set match in pool play, before eventually falling to both. They did also win a pool play match, giving them Canada’s only berth in the knockout phase on the women’s side. They didn’t advance, and went out for 17th, as I think they’re still just a little overmatched at this level (they made a few fleeting mistakes in the match with Germany, and you just can’t get away with those at this level — though it’s perhaps no shock that they’re recently coming off a win at a continental circuit event). But they definitely won me over as a fan, and I’ll keep an eye out for them at events in the near and far future. They made their way through qualification this week at Klagenfurt (I wasn’t sure they’d even go), but couldn’t compete in the main draw due to an injury to Melissa. They’re planning to be back at it for Stare Jablonki in two weeks, though.
By all accounts, the Long Beach Grand Slam (or “World Series of Beach Volleyball” — kind of a corny name, but it seems that’s what they were calling it) was a rollicking success for the second year in a row. It’s not just for selfish reasons that I think having an event that doesn’t require me to be up in the middle of the night to cover. Beach volleyball is inexorably connected to Southern California, so I’m hoping this event remains a tour stop for many years to come.
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