MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — Had you been at the Manhattan Beach Pier on Thursday afternoon, you’d have witnessed the strangest of sights, and heard the strangest of sounds: Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb were out of words.
Bourne and Crabb, the loudest talkers and the brashest of ballers on the AVP Tour, had just watched their names get cemented into the Manhattan Beach Pier, the annual tradition celebrating the victors of the previous year’s tournament, and they were — can you believe it? — silent.
“It’s really emotional,” Bourne said. “It’s a big deal to not only play on this beach but get our names on the pier.”
“This tournament means everything,” Crabb added.
Which is perhaps why Crabb has won it not once, not twice, but now three times in a row, as he and Bourne swept Chaim Schalk and Theo Brunner in the final on Sunday afternoon, 21-17, 21-14.
Of course, with the pier ceremony three days prior, Crabb reverted to his usual self in the post-match interview, confirming for the crowd “that’s three in a row, right? OK,” he said with a laugh. “It’s the one that everyone wants to win. There’s nothing else like it on the AVP or the world. We’ve had an up and down year. After Florida we got our groove back and coming back here all we wanted was to do it again.”
As Crabb alluded, it’s been a strange year for the two.
In six international tournaments, they have yet to make a quarterfinal. In June, they saw their World Championship run come to an end due to COVID. In their first event after that, they were stunned by 16th-seeded Jake Dietrich and Hagen Smith in the opening round of AVP Hermosa Beach. But he’s not one to remain idle, Crabb. Why wait for the sense of urgency to kick in — or maybe it won’t — when you can just create it yourself?
Why not just guarantee a victory in the next AVP tournament?
“It’s just that feeling when you know you’re going to win,” Crabb said after he and Bourne did, incredibly, win AVP Fort Lauderdale at the end of July, without so much as dropping a set.
There was no guarantee in Manhattan. Those may be forever in the rear-view, after his last one, a spur-of-the-moment, adrenaline-fueled guarantee in the immediate moments following their victory in Fort Lauderdale, went terribly awry, as a promised win in Atlanta devolved into a ninth-place dud.
But perhaps it’s a good sign, then, that this team needs no more external manufacturing of a sense of…
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