You hear your share of oohs and aahs around a beach volleyball court. That’s all the more true the week of an Elite 16 event, the Beach Pro Tour stops with the smallest fields and greatest concentration of world-class talent. The crowd, as one, gasps or vocalizes their appreciation for athletic dexterity, strength or daring do. That’s sort of the point of it all.
It’s just that you rarely hear the crowd gasp like that in warm-ups.
Then again, you players like Valentina Gottardi and Ana Patricia come around rather, well, rarely. Making it all the more special to get them on the same court. Even when it’s Court 2.
Imagine Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge trading swings on a side field next to Dodger Stadium. Or Caitlin Clark and Sabrina Ionescu launching 3-pointers in a practice gym in the depths of Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
That’s putting Gottardi and Ana Patricia on a side court, as they were Thursday.
Once you get past the curious scheduling of it all, it’s actually kind of cool. It’s the music legend dropping in unannounced to play a set at the local bar. It’s feeling like you were in the right place at the right moment in time to enjoy something sublime.
People can argue all day about the best players in the sand. You have your list, I have mine.
Actually, I don’t—I’m not smart enough. But I do know the players I most enjoy watching. Not the team, mind you, the duos in whose fortunes I’m most invested and for whom I may or may not occasionally even cheer out loud after years of professional neutrality. No, instead these are individuals who rarely go a seven-point end change, let alone a match, without doing something that makes you grin and shake your head.
Gottardi is the 22-year-old Italian so physically explosive that she might cut to the chase one of these days and leap over the net. Ana Patricia is the 27-year-old Brazilian and reigning Olympic gold medalist, who manages to combine jaw-dropping athleticism with the wily old-soul game of someone a decade her senior.
To be clear, these aren’t one-woman teams. Woe to anyone who doesn’t give Duda her due, and Reka Orsi Toth is paired with Gottardi for a reason.
It’s just that Gottardi and Ana Patricia do things that no one else does—whether because the rest of the world lacks the imagination, the athleticism or, frankly, the recklessness.
They’re glorious. In our age of hyper-efficiency, they play as if to see what’s possible.
As they warmed up for Thursday’s pool opener, they traded hammer blows that brought the crowd to life—it’s worth noting there usually aren’t even crowds for side-court warm-ups. Maybe they fed off each other in that brief moment. Just a little. They wouldn’t be the first to do so, and plenty of people have suggested Ana Patricia is a star who needs a challenge to hit her stride.
Sadly, the match never quite turned into an epic. Ana Patricia and Duda managed their way to a tight, first set win and then eased to the finish line, 21-17, 21-15. The stakes were as low as they can be in this high-stakes world, the opening match of three for each team in the pool—with 12 of 16 teams advancing to the knockout rounds.
Center Court gets the pyrotechnics, the music and the “Monster Block” and “Fireball” cues on the sound system. Court 2 generates its own noise. Thursday, it didn’t take a three-set thriller to make it as loud as just about any match on any court over the first two days.
There was the roar when Gottardi, at something approaching full sprint toward the end line, slowed for the briefest of seconds to blindly set a ball for Orsi Toth at the net.
Or when she sprinted to the net after a serve, tipped an attempted block skyward and, falling to her right, contorted her body to sweep the ball into the far corner for a point.
Or the reaction put-away, Ana Patricia’s block caroming off Gottardi’s shoulder and into the net before Orsi Toth set it for what is one of her partner’s trademark moves. Shoulders squarely facing two o’clock, she contorts her upper body and, in one sweeping motion, whips the ball back toward about 11 o’clock—in this case catching even Duda off guard.
And there were “super spikes” aplenty. There are always super spikes, Gottardi’s vertical and power combining to punish the ball as few peers can.
Now playing with her peer, Gottardi seems to play with more self-assured command. She still chases everything, sprints to the bench at timeouts and sometimes just bounds up and down in place when she can’t do anything else. But she’s evolving from someone with dreams to someone with goals, real, tangible goals that involve beating a lot of people.
Someone who has been to places Ana Patricia has visited. The Brazilian might have ceded the spectacular to Gottardi more often than not on this day, but she found answer after answer. Well-timed blocks, perfect sets and ball after ball just drifting out of Italy’s reach.
When Italy held a three-point lead in the first set and Gottardi went for the no-look option behind her head, there was Ana Patricia to calmly dig it and set up Duda.
On set point, she blocked Gottardi, starting a sequence that finished with Duda going over on one for the point.
It was Ana Patricia. Doing Ana Patricia things. Most days there are no ways through that. Even when you’ve got the body, mind and soul to try things no one else would dare.
And as the noise from Center Court took over and stands emptied, the best show in volleyball came to a close on Court 2.
Graham Hays 