Cuervo Gold Crown bonus eludes May-Treanor, Walsh once again

HUNTINGTON BEACH — For the second straight year, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh walked away from the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals’ Cuervo Gold Crown series final empty-handed.

May-Treanor and Walsh, who have won all three AVP tournaments since the season started last month, forfeited Sunday’s final in the Cuervo Gold Crown series because Walsh aggravated an injury in her right shoulder.

Walsh had surgery in November 2007 to repair her rotator cuff and remove bone chips, bone spurs, and scar tissue which had accumulated.

The forfeit meant that Elaine Youngs and Nicole Branaugh, winners of the other women’s semifinal Sunday morning, claimed the winner-take-all $25,000 bonus check.

To replace the women’s final, which will be telecast on Fox Sports Net, Branaugh and Youngs played an exhibition game with the winners of a coin toss between the semifinal losers.

May-Treanor said she knew late Saturday that Walsh’s shoulder was bothering her, but Walsh wanted to see if she’d feel any differently Sunday morning.

“I feel pretty selfish,” Walsh said. “I should have not played the first place so I could have given the chance to [Davis and Jordan] to win the money ... I thought I could push through. Two matches, you think you can do it. I have a big ego, so I wanted to do it, but I blew it.”

Walsh said she struggled with passing because of her shoulder in Saturday’s Huntington Beach Open final against Tyra Turner and Rachel Wacholder, but she and Walsh prevailed, winning, 21-17, 22-20.

Walsh said she felt her shoulder pop Saturday during the duo’s semifinal match against Branaugh and Youngs.

“Today I thought I could push through it, but I just couldn’t,” Walsh said. “I don’t think that I injured it. I just think that after surgery, you take two steps forward and a step back, and this is the first step back. It’s really disappointing because it’s a big tournament, but there’s a big picture.”

May-Treanor and Walsh are the front runners in the qualifying race for the 2008 Olympics. The top two U.S. men’s and women’s teams will travel to Beijing in August to compete.

May-Treanor, a Long Beach resident who graduated from Newport Harbor High, was irritated with the format which determines who gets the Gold Crown Bonus.

“I don’t think the first three [tour] events should have been called Gold Crown events because really, they’re not,” May-Treanor said. “Only today is the Gold Crown event, as far as I’m concerned. So it’s a little frustrating because — I give props to [Youngs and Branaugh] — but as far as deserving it, I feel we performed in the first three [tour events] and should have a good reason to argue.”

The four-team, single elimination playoff tournament was added this year. Players accumulated points for tournament eligibility depending on how they finished in the first three AVP events this season in Miami, Dallas, and Huntington Beach. The top seeds —May-Treanor and Walsh on the women’s side, and Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers on the men’s side — took first place in all three events.

First place finishes are worth 360 points, and second is 10% less at 324. Third and fourth place finishes are worth 270 points, and fifth is worth 216.

May-Treanor and Walsh defeated Annett Davis and Jenny Johnson Jordan in Sunday morning’s semifinal, 21-14, 21-12. Branaugh and Youngs defeated Turner and Wacholder, 25-23, 25-23.

Last year, there was no playoff, and the team with the highest points total — Branaugh and Youngs — took the bonus. Branaugh and Youngs had one first place and two second place finishes for 1,008 points. May-Treanor and Walsh, who had two first place finishes and one third place, had 990 points.

“Last year, I feel people still don’t understand why we didn’t get the Gold Crown, and leading up to this, we were clear winners of three Gold Crown events,” May-Treanor said. “So I don’t know why you need to have a tournament after a tournament. That’s like winning the World Series or NCAA and saying the next day you’ve got to come back and do it all over again.”

AVP commissioner Leonard Armato made the decision to have the Cuervo Gold bonus finals televised, and the mini tournament prolonged the Huntington Beach event by a day, which meant an additional day of revenue for the AVP.

“One of the things we talked about was, ‘How do you make that final match the match for all the money?’” Armato said. “Last year, the final match wasn’t the match for all the money. It was already decided before that. What we’d like to have happen, and I think fans would like it too, is to have high stakes. We tried to create a situation where there were high stakes and where two teams had a chance to battle it out, winner-take-all, for a big purse. And it didn’t quite work out as well as we’d hoped because of the unexpected injury.”

But May-Treanor was also unhappy about having to play two extra matches because of added bodily stress.

“We give it all we can to win an event, and teams are tired,” May-Treanor said. “And to have to come back the next day — you’re beat up and you’ve just played five or six matches, and if you’re coming through the losers’ [bracket] you’re playing even more — it’s like a clean slate to have to come back and do it again.

“I don’t know. Maybe this Olympics, after the Olympics are over, they’ll have another Olympics the next day because it wasn’t valid. I don’t know. They wait for everybody to get beat up and then make it exciting for the fans.”

Armato said next year’s format would probably be tweaked again, in part because of this very problem.

“I think in this case, we realized we need to have one match that determines a victor, but also a tournament that ends on a single day instead of two days in a row.”

One the men’s side, Dalhausser and Rogers, who won the Gold Crown in 2007, walked away empty-handed after losing to John Hyden and Brad Keenan, 13-21, 21-13, 15-12, in the Sunday morning semifinal. They too, would have been the bonus winners under last year’s format.

Costa Mesa resident Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal were the clear beneficiaries of the change. They won the bonus after tying for fifth place in Miami, then finished second in Dallas and fifth in Huntington Beach.

“I didn’t know how to feel about it to be honest with you,” Gibb said. “When we lost [Saturday], I thought we were out of the tournament and we weren’t going to be able to play in it. So once I found out that we were still in, that we were a third seed, I was ecstatic.”

Gibb and Rosenthal defeated Estancia graduate Matt Fuerbringer and Casey Jennings in the morning semifinal, 21-18, 13-21, 15-13, then down Hyden and Keenan, 21-18, 21-16 in the final.

Notching that fist win was a much-need boost to the team’s confidence, Rosenthal said, who wasn’t bothered by the extra day.

“It felt like a normal tournament for us,” Rosenthal said. “We’re in shape for it. We’re ready to play. Play a five-day tournament, we’ll be here playing. Whatever it is we’ll play.”