GSTAAD, Switzerland — In the end, it was a look that decided the finals of the Gstaad Elite16 on Sunday afternoon. Kristen Nuss had two options in how she presented her body language to Taryn Kloth. “It was either ‘Oh sh**’ or ‘You got this,’ ” Kloth said afterwards. Why the oh sh** look? Nuss […]
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GSTAAD, Switzerland — In the end, it was a look that decided the finals of the Gstaad Elite16 on Sunday afternoon. Kristen Nuss had two options in how she presented her body language to Taryn Kloth.
“It was either ‘Oh sh**’ or ‘You got this,’ ” Kloth said afterwards.
Why the oh sh** look? Nuss and Kloth were down 8-3 in the third set of the gold medal match to Cinderellas Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft, a pair who had barely scratched out of the qualifier, eked out of pool, and put on a scintillating run through the playoffs. Sitting comfortably on house money, Cannon and Kraft put the pressure square on the 6-foot-4 shoulders of Kloth. A 4-1 lead stretched further, to 8-3, behind excellent serving from both Kraft and Cannon and efficient transition play. Kloth was struggling or, to borrow her phrasing, “shanking everything.”
Nuss very well could have given her the oh sh** stink-eye and Kloth would have nodded and agreed.
The thought never crossed her mind.
“I never once doubted or had a lack of confidence in her of thought we couldn’t win,” Nuss said. “I trust her. I kept thinking back to our practices and we trust our defense.”
That trust, both in themselves and in their defense, sparked a 12-3 run to clinch the first Gstaad gold medals of their careers, capping off an undefeated week with a 19-21, 21-15, 15-11 win and their second consecutive gold medal on the Beach Pro Tour.
The gold in Gstaad is merely an extension of a brilliant run of play dating to the Tepic Elite16 in April. In Mexico, they finished ninth for the second straight tournament, and in two events at that point in the season they had won just two of eight matches. Since? They’ve won 17 of 19, making back-to-back-to-back finals, winning silver in Brasilia, gold in Espinho, and gold on Sunday in Gstaad.
“I think it was a different mentality. In Doha [for the season-opener] it was a crazy season the year prior and there was so much happening in both of our lives and together and I think we were tired, mentally,” Nuss said. “Once we were able to quiet the noise and settle down, we were able to get back to the basics.”
Those basics have them as the No. 2 team in the world and certainly the hottest team in the world, as top-ranked Ana Patricia Silva and Duda Lisboa took ninth, their worst finish as a team since the Ostrava Elite16 of 2022. Those basics led them to topping a pool that included every single medalist, alongside Cannon and Kraft and bronze medalists Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoiliova.
That bronze will be a memorable one for the Latvians. Twice they had finished fourth in Gstaad, a result so painful that Graudina admitted prior to the tournament she might prefer to finish fifth.
After a 21-18, 21-18 semifinal loss to Nuss and Kloth, an unbearable third fourth-place finish at the most popular stop on Tour suddenly became a very real possibility, particularly with a Brazilian duo in Agatha and Rebecca awaiting in the bronze medal match.
But they left no doubt, Graudina, who was a teammate of Kraft and Cannon at USC, and Samoilova.
A 21-16 first-set win gave Samoilova the green light to rip from the service line, and rip she did. Three aces in the first five points proved the catalyst to a dominant 21-10 second-set victory for the Latvians, who have now medaled in three straight tournaments and will head into Paris with as much momentum as anybody not named Nuss and Kloth.
“Nastia decided to do it all herself,” Graudina joked afterwards. “I felt like a prop.”
Torrid as Nuss and Kloth are, there is no team in the world on a more brilliant run than that of Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig. For the tenth consecutive tournament, the Swedes found themselves in the finals. And for the eighth time in that run, they will be leaving with gold after a 21-18, 21-18 victory over Brazilians George Wanderley and Andre Loyola, whose silver marks their fifth medal of the season.
It has now been more than a calendar year since Ahman and Hellvig have played in a tournament and failed to make the finals, a run surpassing that of even Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sorum when they were at their heralded best.
In their second tournament since Mol’s return from a foot injury, Norway again made the semifinals, this time finishing on the podium with a 20-22, 22-20, 28-26 victory in the bronze medal match that is unquestionably the best match of the tournament and quite possibly the year.
The Beach Pro Tour continues next week in Vienna, which will be the final event prior to the Paris Olympic Games. Competing for the USA will be Miles Partain and Andy Benesh, Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles, Kim Hildreth and Teegan Van Gunst, and the hottest new team, Kraft and Cannon.
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