Kristen Nuss isn’t entirely sure what came over her, or why. But on the bus ride over from the hotel to the site of the Espinho Elite16 on Saturday afternoon, she texted her mother, Audrey.
“Today’s the day,” she wrote.
Today’s the day Nuss and Taryn Kloth would finally, finally, finally beat Ana Patricia Silva and Duda Lisboa.
The world No. 1 had beaten Nuss and Kloth in all nine previous meetings, the most recent a 21-17, 21-14 display of the Brazilians’ might in the gold-medal match of the Brasilia Elite16 just three weeks prior. What reason did Nuss have for thinking Saturday, May 25, of all the random days on the beach calendar, was the day?
“Had a weird feeling,” she explained.
That weird feeling was spot on, as fifth-seeded Nuss and Kloth alas exorcised their Brazilian demons, sweeping top-seeded Ana Patricia and Duda 21-17, 21-15, continuing a run of sensational play that has had them in back-to-back finals, first in Brasilia, then last week at AVP Huntington Beach.
“I think we just went out and executed for two full sets and made some key plays here and there which has not been the case in the past,” Nuss said.
Indeed, five of the now-10 matchups between the worlds No. 1 and 2 have gone the full three sets, an indicator, by any measure, that despite the lopsided overall results, Nuss and Kloth were very much on par with Brazil’s finest.
What makes Saturday’s quarterfinal win that much sweeter is the sustained upward trajectory that Nuss and Kloth have been on since a slowish start to the year. Consecutive ninths in Elite16s in Doha and Tepic in which they lost six of eight matches have since paved the way to a 13-3 record in the next three tournaments and a shot at three straight finals.
“To be honest, we have been happy with our game on the court this entire season,” said Nuss, who was voted the 2023 Defender of the Year on both the AVP and Beach Pro Tour. “At the beginning, the results weren’t necessarily in our favor but we were still improving on the court. I don’t think people understand the level of play that is happening at these Elite16 events.”
It hardly gets easier from here. Even with the top-ranked Ana Patricia and Duda out of the way, Nuss and Kloth will play the fourth-seeded Olympians Katja Stam and Raisa Schoon of the Netherlands in Sunday’s semifinals. Stam and Schoon have now made three straight semifinals on the Beach Pro Tour and have beaten Nuss and Kloth in consecutive matches, including earlier in pool play in a match with 30-plus mile per hour winds that bore only a passing resemblance of something that looked like beach volleyball.
“The wind volleyball that happened on Thursday was something,” Nuss said. “I don’t even think we were playing volleyball out there but both teams had to deal with it so you just have to go out there and make the most of it and laugh.”
Nuss and Kloth, who earlier Saturday beat Swiss Olympians Anouk Verge-Depre and Joana Mader 21-12, 24-22, are the final Americans in the tournament.
Andy Benesh and Miles Partain bowed out in ninth, dropping to Germans Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler, 16-21, 18-21. The sixth-seeded Germans weren’t finished with the USA there, sweeping Chase Budinger and Miles Evans in the quarterfinals, 21-14, 21-14, pushing their way into their fourth straight semifinal.
For Budinger and Evans, however, the weekend had already been won. Up 240 points in the Olympic race heading into the event, they tacked on another 300 to their lead, while Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner’s tournament was wrapped up in just 39 minutes, losing in the first round of the qualifier to Hendrik Mol and Mathias Berntsen.
Budinger and Evans are now No. 13 in the Olympic rankings and 540 points ahead of Brunner and Crabb with just two events remaining: next weekend’s Stare Jablonki Challenge in Poland, and the following weekend’s Ostrava Elite16 in the Czech Republic.
Crabb and Brunner can gain a maximum of 340 points with a gold medal in Poland, and will need a minimum of a fifth in Ostrava coming out of the qualifier.
Nuss and Kloth play Stam and Schoon at 1 a.m. Pacific. In the other women’s semifinal, Switzerland’s Nina Brunner and Tanja Huberli play Spain’s Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno.
The men’s semifinals are between Ehlers and Wickler and the Netherlands’ Steven van de Velde and Matthew Immers, and Brazil’s George Wanderley and Andre Loyola and Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig. The former is a rematch of the Brasilia Elite16 semifinals, while the latter is a rematch of the Tepic Elite16 gold medal match.
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