Split Decision: Hovland, Dodd Go Separate Ways

For almost a decade on the pro beach volleyball tour, Tim Hovland and Mike Dodd were called the “Big Game Hunters.”

And they bagged enough purses last year to set a circuit record for season prize earnings. But for much of 1990, Hovland and Dodd have been firing blanks.

So Hovland and Dodd--names which have become as synonymous to beach volleyball as Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos--officially ceased to exist as a team Monday morning with a call from Hovland in Playa del Rey to Dodd in Manhattan Beach.

Hovland calls it “the ultimate breakup.”

“It was getting stale where we were at,” Hovland said. “It was like we were dancing with the same person for too long. If the winning fire isn’t there anymore and frustration sets in, then it’s time to look for something else.”

Hovland and Dodd split up after having won more than 50 tournaments and more than $1 million.

Both players said it was an amicable breakup. But for volleyball fans, the sight of Hovland and Dodd with new partners will be a strange one.

Saturday in a tournament in Cleveland, Hovland will be teamed with Kent Steffes of Palos Verdes, a 22-year-old rising phenom who is No. 6 in prize winnings this year.

“He’s a good young buck who gets up and bangs,” Hovland, 31, said. “He kind of reminds me of young, cocky me when I was up and coming.”

Dodd, 32, will be paired with Culver City’s Dan Vrebalovich. For most of this season, Steffes and Vrebalovich were a team, but like Hovland and Dodd they hadn’t played to expectations.

“I’m looking forward to finishing up the season and seeing how I mesh with some of these other players,” Dodd said. “It’s going to be kind of fun to play with some different guys.”

Last season, Hovland and Dodd earned a staggering $162,000 apiece--not counting endorsements--and seemed poised to unseat Smith and Stoklos as the beach tour’s top tandem.

On the way, they made their mark by outlasting opponents, grinding out side-outs until the other team faded away.

And they were one of the tour’s most entertaining pairs, for their play and for the curious mix of their personas. It was forever Dodd playing the foil to Hovland’s colorful antics.

“We were pretty good together,” Hovland said. “Sometimes I’d bring him up, sometimes he’d cool me off.”

But the veteran teammates sputtered this year, winning only twice--in Houston and Fresno. And they had not only dropped farther behind Smith and Stoklos, but were passed by the red-hot team of Karch Kiraly and Brent Frohoff.

The lanky Dodd battled bronchitis for much of the season and seemed a step slow. And Hovland’s McEnroe-like outbursts of temper increased along with his frustrations.

Hovland and Dodd reached bottom last weekend in Milwaukee--in an event they had won three consecutive years.

They were bounced out of the winner’s bracket with a 18-16 defeat to 20th-seeded Todd Schaefer and Mark Eller. Then Hovland and Dodd suffered the final indignity in a 15-12 loss to Scott Ayakatubby and Ricci Luyties.

The ninth-place finish was the duo’s lowest of the year.

“Mike and I just weren’t getting it done,” Hovland said. “There’s some big money tournaments coming up. I want to be battling for them, not just getting by them.”

Both Hovland and Dodd said they had been hard-pressed for luck this season. They were featured panning for gold along a Rocky Mountain stream in a television segment filmed for the tour’s stop in Boulder, Colo., but the real nuggets were harder for Hovland and Dodd to come by.

“It takes a lot of breaks to win in this game,” Dodd said. “A bad call here or there, a block here or there--we could have had five or six wins by now.”

They met in 1981 at the U.S. National Team Training Center in San Diego, and decided to give the beach tour a shot when they started beating Kiraly and Smith in post-lunch pickup games on the beach.

Hovland was a three-time indoor All-American at USC. Dodd, who at 16 had been the youngest player to earn a AAA amateur beach rating, had played four years of basketball at San Diego State.

They earned their first beach title together at State Beach in Pacific Palisades in 1981.

Hovland admitted the breakup had been difficult and emotional. But as in most breakups, Hovland didn’t rule out the chance of a reunion down the road.

“Like in a marriage, maybe this is just an affair,” Hovland said. “Maybe if we can’t enjoy it with anybody else, we’ll get back together. Who’s to say we’re not going to, especially if we don’t dig being alone in the world?”