GOLD AGAIN! Kristen Nuss, Taryn Kloth join rarified air with Beach Pro Tour Finals win

The conversation had to be had. One of the most difficult of Taryn Kloth’s life.

The 6-foot-4 blocker and her partner, the diminutive Kristen Nuss, had already assembled the most decorated season in American beach volleyball since Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross’ nine-medal haul in 2016. Already in 2023, Nuss and Kloth had won a bronze medal at the World Championships. Climbed the rankings to No. 2 in the world. Put the globe on notice that, yes, a 5-foot-6 defender — a “chaparrita,” as Nuss was dubbed in Mexico during the World Championships — is far more than an adorable gimmick at the sport’s highest level.

Yet in this week’s Beach Pro Tour Finals in Doha, the grand finale event of the season, the one with $800,000 on the line, one of the most prestigious tournaments on the calendar, they were flat. Twice, they’d been swept in pool play, putting them on the brink of not advancing to the playoffs for the first time of their careers.

Then came the chat.

“One of the toughest and brutally honest conversations,” Kloth recalled of their team meeting between their second and third matches of pool play. “But now I can say I am very grateful for it.”

If you can quantify gratitude, this week’s comes in the form of $150,000, the biggest paycheck available in beach volleyball and the largest of their individual careers. Whatever was said in that meeting, the candor of the discussion elevated Nuss and Kloth’s game on the court to levels at which they had never before played. In the four matches after their talk, they didn’t drop a single set, outscoring their opponents by 45 points. They knocked off the teams seeded No. 6 (Katja Stam and Raisa Schoon), 5 (Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson), 3 (Mariafe Artacho and Taliqua Clancy) and 8 (Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Muller). They knocked off World Champions and Olympic medalists.

And they made it look easy.

Their 21-17, 21-14 sweep of Tillmann and Muller in the gold medal match Saturday was clinical,…