Volleyball Final Ends With a Thud

The sun shone brightly on the action at the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour’s Manhattan Beach Open this week, but off the courts, a cloud lingered with the threat that this might be the last installment of beach volleyball’s crown jewel.

And if Sunday indeed marked the last time the AVP visits the hallowed sands of Manhattan Beach, the purists must be cringing about how the granddaddy of beach volleyball came to an end.

Phil Dalhausser unloaded a jump serve that nicked the top of the net and plopped to the ground for match point, providing an anticlimactic ending to an otherwise compelling 22-20, 21-23, 15-11 victory by Dalhausser and Todd Rogers over Mike Lambert and Stein Metzger in the Manhattan Beach Open.

Before 2001, such a serve would have been a side out, but rule changes, lamented by beach volleyball’s old school, made a point out of any ball that touches the ground.

Thus, the historic tournament ended -- perhaps forever if the tour cannot resolve a dispute with the California Coastal Commission over charging admission to its tournaments on California beaches.

“It’s a [cruddy] way to end the game, I have to admit,” Dalhausser said.

Lambert, who punted the game ball out of the stadium in frustration, said: “It’s probably my least favorite rule. It was a great game and to have it end on such a random thing like that kind of takes all the fun out of it.”

The AVP has said it cannot continue to produce events in Southern California without charging admission because it’s losing too much money doing so.

The Coastal Commission, however, refuses to allow that practice, saying the public has the right to access the beach for free.

The AVP hopes to resolve the issue before next year, but Commissioner Leonard Armato has said that the possibility of not coming back is for real.

Before match point, the final match provided just about everything else. It was the top two men’s teams on tour battling for the sport’s biggest title and jockeying for position on the season money list and in the points standings.

Dalhausser took a couple of Lambert spikes off of his face, Metzger made a kick save on a dig and Rogers used his chest to dig a ball that landed in bounds for a point.

It also featured Rogers, at 6 feet 2 the shortest player on the court, making a key block on Lambert, one of the tour’s hardest hitters, to give his team a 14-11 lead and momentum in the third game.

“That was pretty much the clincher,” Rogers said. “I went up, had my little bunny ears over the net and got a little lucky. What else can you say? It happens sometimes.”

Rogers was nearly unstoppable in the final, scoring 31 kills with only three hitting errors in 49 attempts. He also had a match-high 15 digs and carried his team to its sixth AVP title of the year -- a mark no men’s team had reached since Karch Kiraly and Adam Johnson in 1998.

This one, however, was Manhattan Beach, and followed a victory by the pair in Austria at what is considered the top tournament on the international tour. It was the first victory at Manhattan Beach for both Dalhausser and Rogers.

“It plugs a hole,” said Rogers, who has won 19 times in his career. “You look, you say, ‘Wow, he won that, he won that, he won that, but there’s no Manhattan, that’s the granddaddy.’ ”

Dalhausser, who grew up in Florida hearing about the legend of volleyball at Manhattan Beach, said he was on cloud nine, even though his face was bandaged to stop the bleeding caused by the two shots he took off his face.

“Yeah, they hurt,” Dalhausser said. “But if I have to take a couple of shots off the face to win Manhattan, I’ll do it.”

Lambert and Metzger have each won at Manhattan Beach, but that didn’t make the loss any easier. They had a 20-19 lead in the first game and let it slip away and were tied, 10-10 in the third game, but were outscored, 5-1, down the stretch.

“This is like the hardest loss I’ve ever taken,” Metzger said. “It felt like it was our tournament to win and then to lose in that fashion, it’s heartbreaking.”