Fortune Picks Some Winners on the Beach : Volleyball: Youthful Team Ocean Pacific’s comeback gives it first Bud 4-Man Volleyball Tour victory, and Brian Ivie loses bragging rights to roommate Dan Greenbaum.

He can just picture his roommate, ready with the Morton, about to pour salt in the wound.

If Bryan Ivie didn’t feel bad enough already, he probably does now.

“Having to hear about the loss for the next two weeks, that’s worse than anything else,” Ivie said after his team went down in the final of the Bud 4-Man Volleyball Tour Sunday afternoon at Mission Bay.

But the way Ivie’s team lost was probably just as bad. Upstart Team Ocean Pacific roared back from a six-point deficit to upset Team Paul Mitchell, 15-10, to win the initial stop of this 10-event beach tour.

Team Paul Mitchell beat the OP boys Saturday, but Ivie’s gloating was short lived. With Sunday’s victory, bragging rights officially transferred to Dan Greenbaum, Ivie’s roommate, fellow U.S. national team member, and Team Ocean Pacific’s setter. Sharing in those rights is Scott Fortune, captain of the national and Ocean Pacific teams.

“We’ll have a little fun with it,” said Fortune, a 6-foot-6 outside hitter who led his team with nine kills in the championship match.

Team OP was lucky just to get there. Team Paul Mitchell and B.U.M. Equipment had 3-1 records after Sunday’s morning rounds, but the coolie-coiffed bunch, with the better ratio of points scored to points against, advanced to the title game.

Team OP (2-2) met B.U.M. Equipment in the semifinal and barely escaped with a 15-13 victory. Led by veteran Craig Buck, the bums almost pulled off comeback of the tournament. Down 12-3, they reeled off the next 10 points to take a 13-12 lead, but OP middle blocker Tom Duke created a wall at the net that eventually took its toll.

Maybe that’s where Team OP got its inspiration to come back against Paul Mitchell.

“Someone told us were were down 9-2, but that didn’t faze us,” Fortune said. “We knew they had that lead because we let them block us. We knew we could come back if we kept swinging and were aggressive.”

Actually, Fortune’s team was down 9-3 before the comeback. The key, he said, was putting Duke on Ivie in what would be similar to a man-to-man defense.

“They live or die by Ivie,” he said.

Team OP neutralized the strong hitting and blocking threat of Ivie, forced its opponents into unforced errors it previously hadn’t committed, and scored on several perfectly placed cut shots.

“Those guys were able to make the adjustments,” Ivie said.

The momentum in the championship, as it had in several games throughout the tournament, took a huge shift in favor of Team OP, and Ivie half expected it to shift back.

“It’s easy to get in a side-out rhythm, it’s easy to score points quickly, but unfortunately, we didn’t get them,” Ivie said.

But he stressed that Team Paul Mitchell is still getting its sand legs, while other teams are further along in getting theirs.

“This was the first tournament; we just need to iron out a few of the kinks,” Ivie said. “Duke and (Jeff) Williams, those guys have been playing on the East Coast tour, and it makes a huge difference.”

Fortune, who drafted what is the youngest team on the tour, said results from this first effort gave him hope for the remainder of the tour, and future years.

“I purposely drafted these guys,” he said. “I played against most of them in college, and I knew what they were capable of doing. The older players have done a great job, but maybe it’s the changing of the guard. Maybe it’s time to change places.”

Team OP split $9,500 for the victory--the captain gets $2,660, the remaining players received $2,280. Team Paul Mitchell divvied up $7,500, and third-place B.U.M. Equipment picked up $5,500.