Todd Rogers called it “mind boggling.”
Winning eight international beach volleyball tournaments in a five-month span is an amazing achievement.
Rogers and Phil Dalhausser became the first men’s team to accomplish the feat Sunday when they defeated Brazil’s Harley Marques and Pedro Salgado, 21-18, 21-12, in the gold-medal match at the Swatch-FIVB World Tour’s Otero Open in Kristiansand, Norway.
It was the fourth straight World Tour championship for the No. 1-ranked team in the world, who, counting tournaments on the domestic AVP Tour, have now won a total of 14 events this year.
“It’s kind of crazy, really,” Rogers said in an email to Presidiosports.com about setting the record. “We didn’t expect to win five much less eight.
“I figured we would win some. I think we have averaged about two or three the past couple of years.”
The eight international titles ties the overall mark set last year by the Brazilian women’s team of Larissa Franca and Juliana Silva. The 2008 Olympic champions will attempt to win No. 9 next weekend in their final FIVB tournament in Aland, Finland.
Rogers said “outside of the Olympics (this season) is certainly comparable to 2008.”
In that year, Rogers-Dalhausser won four FIVB events and 11 on the AVP Tour.
Together, they’ve won 16 international tournaments since 2006, ranking them second on the all-time list behind the 33 of Brazil’s Emanuel Rego and Ricardo Santos.
Rogers-Dalhausser defeated Ricardo and Marcio Araujo (21-18, 18-21, 17-15) in the semifinals in Norway. They are now 15-3 this season against Brazilian pairs after starting the season with a 2-3 mark against the South Americans.
By going undefeated in the tournament, Rogers-Dalhausser extended their match winning streak to 18, which is remarkable considering they’ve been playing around the world virtually every weekend since mid-May.
Rogers said they didn’t make it a goal to set the single-season wins record.
“Our goal, as I said before, was to win the tour championship,” (which they did last week), he said. “We enter every tourney with the idea that we can win the event. We just didn’t expect this many times.”
They split a first-place prize of $30,000, which increases the FIVB season earnings to $178,850.
