BEACH NOTES : Hovland, New Partner Get Off to Winning Start

You don’t usually associate rain, iron and brick with beach volleyball.

Then again, you don’t usually associate veteran beach pros Mike Dodd and Tim Hovland with other partners, either.

But all of those elements combined to give last weekend’s Cleveland Open an altogether surreal feeling.

The Cleveland event was played on imported sand in a downtown parking lot, surrounded by century-old brick buildings and iron bridges, and under a steady weekend-long drizzle. Only about a thousand die-hard Clevelanders watched the final day’s action from beneath the cover of umbrellas.

What they did see were Hovland and Dodd playing with new partners for the first time in nine years following last week’s stunning breakup.

Having a new partner by his side didn’t seem to bother Hovland, who teamed with 22-year-old Kent Steffes to win the championship. Hovland and Steffes outlasted Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos, 15-10, in the final.

Hovland’s fierce blocking and Steffes’ solid back-line play carried the pair in their first tournament together.

“We won our first event, but that’s nothing,” Hovland said. “We still have a lot to prove. We’re aiming for the big ones at the end of the season.”

Hovland, 31, has said that Steffes reminds him of himself when he was breaking into the tour’s upper echelon almost a decade ago.

“Kent added a different dimension to my game with his jump serve,” Hovland said.

Hovland saw a familiar face at the net in the winner’s bracket finals, when he and Steffes squared off against Dodd and his new partner, Dan Vrebalovich.

Hovland, who ended his partnership with Dodd on Monday with a phone call, admitted it was strange at first to be looking at his long-time right-hand man through the net.

Hovland and Steffes pounded Dodd and Vrebalovich--who seemed a bit disoriented--15-5, under light rain showers.

“It was weird for a while, but after the start of the game it was kill or be killed,” he said.

Hovland and Steffes are skipping this weekend’s action in Chicago to play an international exhibition tournament in Italy. The Italian Volleyball Federation offered the pair more money for their appearance than they would have earned by winning in Chicago.

Although Hovland and Steffes were unstoppable in Cleveland, they won the tournament without having to deal with the tour’s hottest team--Karch Kiraly and Brent Frohoff.

Since getting together for the Venice Open in late May, Kiraly and Frohoff have finished no lower than second in all eight of their events, winning four times.

But Kiraly missed the Cleveland tournament to work as a color analyst for the Turner Broadcasting Network’s coverage of indoor volleyball at the Goodwill Games in Seattle.

Kiraly will be back with Frohoff in Chicago, but will miss the following weekend’s tournament in Seal Beach because of his final Goodwill Games commitment.

At Cleveland, Frohoff got reacquainted with Scott Ayakatubby, his former partner of nearly seven years. When Frohoff and Ayakatubby first broke onto the tour, they were known as the “Young Lions” because of their formidable jump serves.

The old teammates still had some chemistry left at Cleveland.

They were leading Hovland and Steffes in the winner’s bracket semifinals, 11-8, but Hovland and Steffes came back to win, 15-12.

Frohoff and Ayakatubby were later eliminated by Smith and Stoklos in the loser’s bracket.

It’s been a busy week for the Dodd family.

At the same time Dodd was beginning practices with Vrebalovich, Patty Dodd--Mike’s wife--announced a new beach teammate of her own in veteran Rita Crockett-Royster.

Patty Dodd had been playing with rookie Jeanne Reeves after Jackie Silva--the No. 1 player on the women’s tour--lured away Dodd’s old partner, Karolyn Kirby.

Crockett-Royster suddenly became available, however, when her contract commitments in the Italian Professional League expired.

“It’s nice, because I get to play with an experienced player, and I don’t have to break up any established teams to do it,” Patty Dodd said.

This weekend, Dodd and Crockett-Royster are gunning for the winners’ share of the $85,000 International Ladies’ Pro Beach Volleyball tournament in Tokyo.

As in Cleveland, the teams are playing on imported sand in an unlikely setting--amid the glass and steel skyscrapers of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district.

The Tokyo purse is one of the biggest on the women’s circuit this season. With seven events left on the schedule--including Tokyo--Silva is leading the tour in prize money with $29,000.

Last weekend in San Clemente, Chris Frohoff proved that big brother Brent isn’t the only one in the family with a knack for winning big prize money.

Chris Frohoff, 25, a professional surfer, outlasted three San Clemente surfers to capture the final of the $40,000 Body Glove San Clemente Surf Classic IV.

The contest was plagued by small surf in the one-to-two-foot range, but Frohoff managed to slice off a few solid rides in a 30-minute final against Orange County locals Dino Andino, Matt Archbold, and Brian McNulty.

The win was Frohoff’s first victory this year on the Professional Surfing Assn. of America tour, and it earned him $5,875.

“I got the waves, what little there was,” Frohoff said. “I knew it would be the guy that got the best waves. I just tried to take turns with the guys out there. It was small and pathetic.”

Frohoff has surfed in only half the PSAA contests this year because he spends the rest of the year on the international pro tour.

He got some consolation for San Clemente’s small surf during the week when a pair of hurricanes off the southern tip of Baja whipped up giant waves along the Southern California shoreline.

And he was able to practice his big wave surfing for next week’s Op Pro in Huntington Beach--one of the international tour’s premier events.