Tough start for USA at season-ending Beach Pro Tour Finals

The final event of the season, which is, in some ways — see: financial, with $150,000 to the winning team — the biggest of the 2023 year, could hardly have started worse  for the USA.

The only victory in the five matches played by American teams on Wednesday in the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Finals in Doha, Qatar, came via forfeit, as Switzerland’s Tanja Huberli and Nina Brunner bowed out with a medical injury in their first match.

Other than that?

Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes fell to Germany’s Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Muller (17-21, 22-20, 15-13) in the morning match, allowing a 7-0 run in the third set to flip what once had been a commanding 8-4 lead.

Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, beneficiaries of the Swiss forfeit in the evening rounds, were stunned by Brazilian late entrants Taina Silva and Victoria Lopes (21-16, 21-18), who are coming off a bronze medal at last weekend’s Nuvali Challenge in the Philippines.

While Nuss and Kloth were able to take the afternoon off, Cheng and Hughes returned to the court and fell once more, to Canada’s Brandie Wilkerson and Melissa Humana-Paredes (23-21, 21-16).

To cap a fruitless day, Andy Benesh and Miles Partain, playing their first tournament since the World Championships in early October, fell in three to the Czech Republic’s Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner (26-24, 17-21, 15-12).

To be clear: There is no shame in any loss at the Beach Pro Tour Finals. The field is an assemblage of the top 10 teams in the world, based on the best eight finishes for each team in this calendar year. Benesh and Partain’s loss came at the hands of the World Champions. There is no hanging of the head in the aftermath of that.

But the road gets no easier from here.

Awaiting Benesh and Partain are Poland’s Bartosz Losiak and Michal Bryl, bronze medalists at the World Championships; Qatar’s Cherif Samba and Ahmed Tijan, the 2021 Olympic bronze medalists; and Italy’s Paolo Nicolai and Sam Cottafava, who upset…