Phil Dalhausser, and the growing Legend(s) of the Thin Beast

HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — Phil Dalhausser is not yet retired. Nor does he seem particularly close, despite all of the signs these past few seasons that he was on the cusp of joining so many of his peers — Jake Gibb, Nick Lucena, John Hyden, Casey Patterson, among other notables from his talented generation — in doing just that. At 42 years old, playing part-time, practicing sometimes just once a week at his home in Orlando, Fla., Dalhausser is still considered by most players on the AVP as the best blocker in the United States.

Typically it takes time for legends to sprout and take root. Years of retirement for the usual apocrypha to spin. And yet, despite his towering presence still being very much felt on the AVP, the Legends of the Thin Beast have already begun being told.

Take Theo Brunner spouting tall tales of Sunday Phil, a man who could take over a match on a whim, whenever he so chose. Or Adam Roberts, regaling the days when Young Phil would dominate pickup basketball games in Myrtle Beach, canning free throw after free throw.

“You ever see that Bo Jackson documentary? Where Bo was 17, he jumped over the Mississippi River?” Dalhausser said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “It’s a little exaggerated. It was nice words, so I appreciate that.”

Dalhausser is still very much the same Phil Dalhausser who will go down as one of the greatest beach volleyball players of all-time, and will be forever mentioned in endless debate over who is the GOAT. Yet 2022 Phil, a man who still won two AVPs and made another three Sundays, was undeniably different. Playful, in a way.

“I’d been doing the same thing: Left side, blocker, boring,” he said. How better to spice things up than to begin his year as the very antithesis of the man who had been the most dominant player in the game for the previous 15 years, as a right side split-blocker with Andy Benesh in Austin — and then win the dang thing?

“I’m a free agent. It keeps it interesting,” he said with a laugh. “I had a lot of fun with Andy.”

That much was evident in Austin, just as it would be evident throughout the remainder of a whimsically brilliant season for Dalhausser. He’d crack up at Casey Patterson’s nonstop chatter in the players box and on the court, placing the perfect final…