Steffes Has Fired a Few Verbal Volleys, Too : Beach Volleyball: He hasn’t been afraid to speak his mind on the way to the top of his game.

Kent Steffes tosses aside the telephone.

“Whoa, hang on just a second,” he says.

He returns a minute later with a towel and an explanation.

He has spilled grape juice on his couch in his Pacific Palisades home. Bummer.

“The couch is black, so it shouldn’t be too bad,” he said. “It’ll be OK.”

Minor disasters have been few this summer for Steffes, whose skills on the pro beach volleyball tour far outshine his ability to handle a jug of juice.

In his fourth season on the tour, he and partner Karch Kiraly of San Clemente have passed Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos as the top team.

And Steffes has established himself as one of the most outspoken players on the tour.

His professional career got off to a controversial start in 1988, his sophomore season at UCLA. The NCAA declared him ineligible after his beach partner, UCLA assistant coach Wally Martin, accepted prize money.

He was dumped by Kiraly two years ago and they started playing together again last season. He got into a shoving match with Stoklos two years ago, and traded verbal jabs earlier this season with Corona del Mar’s Brian Lewis, another rising star on the tour.

A member of the tour’s board of directors, he has complained that tournaments look like beer commercials, a statement that wasn’t too popular with tour sponsor Miller Lite. He even wants to ban the tour’s popular bikini contests.

Unpopular with the players? Steffes attributes that to jealousy.

“The other players don’t care about me,” Steffes said. “And I don’t care about them. I’m labeled as controversial. I consider myself the only one with a brain.”

An economics major at UCLA, he takes a businesslike approach to the sport. Before he began his takeover of the tour two seasons ago, he was surviving, week to week, on a penny-pinching budget.

He used to sneak sandwiches out of the players’ tent to help cut the grocery bill. He slept on the beach and on friends’ hotel room floors. He saved on travel expenses by flying red-eyes.

“I always felt that if I kept improving, I could get to this level,” he said.

He has improved enough to have earned $654,000 in prize money, $487,000 in the last two seasons.

Steffes--playing with two partners--has won 16 tournaments this season, tying the tour record set by Smith and Stoklos in 1987.

He can break the record this weekend at the $250,000 Miller Lite U.S. championships at the Hermosa Beach Pier, where he and Kiraly are top seeded in the 48-team field.

The three-day, double-elimination tournament begins at 9 a.m. today, with the final scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday. NBC will televise the tournament live on Saturday and Sunday.

Steffes, 24, and Kiraly, 31, have never won the U.S. championships. They finished a disappointing seventh last year.

“I would trade all 16 (victories) just to win this one,” Steffes said.

Steffes won two tournaments early in the year with Adam Johnson of Capistrano Beach while Kiraly was playing in Italy. So Steffes has clinched sole possession of the tour’s bonus-pool championship, worth $70,000.

“The only thrill there is when they send me the check,” he said.

After tying a tour record with 13 consecutive victories earlier this season, Steffes and Kiraly have struggled the last two weeks.

“We had so much momentum and confidence during that streak,” Steffes said. “And then it just came to a blinding halt.”

With Steffes playing despite a bone chip in his right wrist, he and Kiraly finished fifth at Seal Beach two weeks ago, then fourth last weekend at Santa Cruz.

“Everyone is freaking out because we haven’t won,” Steffes said. “But you have to remember that the two losses have come after winning 13 in a row. Karch and I aren’t panicking right now.”

Steffes said the wrist injury bothered him slightly at Seal Beach but is getting better. He hurt it diving out of bounds at the Cleveland Open three weeks ago.

“I fell out of bounds, a three- or four-foot drop off the court, and right on my hand,” Steffes said. “It was my hitting hand.”

Steffes doesn’t like playing on courts in cities such as Cleveland and New Orleans, where courts are set up in parking lots or business districts instead of the beach.

“The court we played on in New Orleans was a joke,” Steffes said. “(Stoklos) stepped in a hole and nearly broke his ankle. If he had, that would have been criminal.”

Steffes has an opinion on just about everything, and he’s not shy about sharing it.

In fact, you can pay to get his advice on sports trading cards. He and a friend set up a 900 number last month, and the response has exceeded their expectations.

“We’ve been dead-on with all our picks,” Steffes said. “A month ago, we told everyone to buy Gary Sheffield cards. Now he’s going for the triple crown, and his $4 card is worth 14 bucks.”

So, what are those Kent Steffes volleyball trading cards worth?

“Absolutely nothing,” he said.