Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser have picked up where they left off last season.
After winning a record nine international events in 2010, the local pro beach volleyball professionals opened the 2011 FIVB World Tour by successfully defending their title at the Brasilia Open in Brazil’s capital city on Saturday.
In rematch of last year’s final, top-seeded Rogers-Dalhausser swept home-country favorites Emanuel Rego and Alison Cerutti 21-18, 21-13 in a 35-minute gold-medal match before an frenzied crowd decked out in yellow.
The 6-9 Dalhausser awed the crowd with a dominating performance at the net. He blocked 11 balls for points, including eight in the second game.
“We served Alison, who is a George Romaine clone,” Rogers told Presidiosports in an email. “He shot two balls, so we knew it would be decided with Phil blocking him or not. Worked out our way this time.”
The champions share $30,000 and the silver medalists split $21,000.
It was the 18th gold medal in 38 FIVB World Tour events for Rogers and Dalhausser, and the title win extended their tour-record winning streak to 29 matches.
“We love playing in Brazil, the fans are the best in the world and the Brazilian teams are the toughest to beat match in and match out,” Rogers told FIVB.org. “We played them two days ago in a match that turned out to be much closer, but they are a great team and they made more errors than we did and that turned out to be the difference.”
With the standing room only crowd at center court cheering feverishly to start the match, Rogers scored first and then the teams battled back and forth through 13 ties with the last one at 17-17 before Dalhausser scored two consecutive points on blocks of Alison and after a Brazil time out, Dalhausser scored on a cross court kill that went by Emanuel. Alison gave his team a point at 18 on a kill through Dalhausser’s block attempt and then Rogers finished the set on a slap shot to the right corner.
In the second set, Alison started with a kill off Rogers for a point but then the Americans ran off five straight points on two Dalhausser blocks and three errors by the Brazilians, building up leads of 11-5, 13-6 and after Alison/Emanuel closed the gap to 13-18, Dalhausser had a kill followed by a Rogers kill off Emanuel and ended the match on two more blocks by Dalhausser.
The title showed the tour Rogers-Dalhausser are not about to sit on their laurels from last year.
“Yes, 2010 was an amazing year for us and will be very tough to duplicate, but (the win in Brazil) shows we are still there. We’ve been working hard and are ready to play,” said Rogers.
China’s 10th-seeded Penggen Wu/Linyin Xu defeated third-seeded Marcio Araujo/Ricardo Santos of Brazil 21-17, 16-21 and 51-10 in 52 minutes for the bronze medal.
