Phil Dalhausser stands, hands on his hips, shaking his head.
âThat,â he says, âlooks so boring.â
Heâs watching a young man play volleyball by himself, tossing a ball, hitting it line, tossing another, hitting a cut, tossing another, hitting a high angle. Over and over and over, nearly two hours on end.
Many of the passerby on the Manhattan Beach Pier that day could have reasonably concluded one of a few things: the guy was either bored, as Dalhausser suggested, had no friends to play with, or was just borderline crazy.
There was, however, a fourth option.
Tri Bourne was actually having the time of his life.
Weeks later, Bourne is in Bear Valley, California. He skipped out of AVP San Francisco early. Itâs tough to be around the sport you once dominated, watching others who had never beaten you win titles youâre sure would be yours for the taking. So heâs visiting his sister, Kai, and his nieces and nephew instead.
Theyâre barefoot minions, those three, ages two, four and six, charging around the forest, biking down hills, rumbling through creeks and swimming in the lake nearby. Itâs suggested that theyâre already addicted to exercise, and itâs also pointed out that itâs not the worst addiction to have.
Bourne purses his lips, looks down.
âIt is,â he says, âwhen the one thing you canât do, is exercise.â
***
This is not a comeback story. No, no. Thatâs not how Bourne views it, and itâs not how heâd like you to view it, either. This is a reinvention, a rebirth, though not of the holy sort. Tri Bourne isnât returning to the AVP Tour, to beach volleyball, the same person he was when he and John Hyden finished second in the world rankings in 2016.
Heâs coming back as Tri Bourne 2.0. More well-rounded. A different person with a different perspective. A mindset that goes far deeper than pass, set, hit. A skill set that is relevant east of the Pacific Coast Highway, too.
Weeks before the onset of the 2017 season, Bourne and Hyden were registered to play the Fort Lauderdale Major. Bourne was still on the heels of ankle surgery, but all seemed fine. His mobility was good enough, jump felt no different, cardio was up to his world-class standard.
Except there was something going on with his hands. Heâd block a ball and his hands would sting and throb, eventually swelling to the point that he wore mitts at practice. He thought it was carpal tunnel syndrome, where the hands experience tingling and numbness from a pinched nerve.
He got it checked out. The doctors didnât know what it was, just that it was not carpal tunnel. Neither did the next doctors. Nor the next. It wouldnât be until Bourne went to the University of Utah, site of the United States Olympic Committeeâs medical center, that he would receive a diagnosis.
It wasnât carpal tunnel syndrome, the doctors confirmed. It was an autoimmune disease, something called myositis, which means, generally speaking, inflammation of the muscles that you use to move your body.
It means Kryptnonite to the boy who grew up paddling, surfing, canoeing, playing volleyball, basketball, hiking â âjust charging,â as he would put it.
The boy whose life was, to that point, based on movement, was no longer allowed to move.
âBasically,â he said, âI just had to shut it down.â
Friends began to see changes in him. He wasnât quite the same. Something was off. Because of course something was off. Bourneâs entire life, entire existence, had been flipped upside down and inside out.
âYou know when itâs raining and you have to sit in the house all day?â he said. âYeah, that was me, every day. It was basically that. Thatâs what it was like. Everyone who knows me knows Iâm pretty damn ADD. I come from a family thatâs pretty much addicted to working out, thatâs definitely a thing. Yeah, man, itâs intense. Thatâs why I had to go internal with everything because it was a lot, it was getting to be too much. It was, uh, it sucked. It sucked for a while, because I still had that drive, coming out of the Olympic qualifier, and my ego was just huge, I was ready to be the top guy in the U.S.
âI was still ready to work hard, but what could I do? It was âDo nothing.ââ
He couldnât surf, so he would body-surf occasionally, until his heart rate went too high and heâd have to sit back down. He couldnât play volleyball, and watching film was almost as tortuous as blocking with the mitts. He couldnât eat, well, anything. Anything that could potentially inflame his muscles â dairy, gluten, alcohol, just about everything not named broccoli, rice, and organic chicken breasts â was removed from his diet. The snacks in his pantry shifted spectacularly, from chips and salsa to dry-roasted peanuts and pumpkin seeds. His weight plummeted, nearly going south of 170 pounds.
âIt was definitely one of the tougher things to see someone go through,â Trevor Crabb, Bourneâs partner for AVP Manhattan, said. âYou canât imagine missing out on a whole year and a half of your job and your love. Seeing him last year, when it first started, basically his muscles in his arms were as skinny as my legs. It was crazy just to see how his body changed so drastically.â
It was, for an athlete who had competed in 13 different countries in a single year and took a bronze at the World Tour Finals, rock bottom.
But thatâs the thing about rock bottom.
The only direction you can go is up.
***
It began with the livestream. The AVP was expanding its coverage to Facebook live on stadium court. Bourne was asked if he might want to commentate. Seeing as he didnât have anything else going on, sure, he could do that. It was an easy way to stay relevant and involved in the game, while expanding his skill set as a human being.
What he discovered was that, while he may have been a little rough around the edges in terms of live commentating â considering he had never once done the job and had precisely zero training prior to his debut in New York of 2017, he did, objectively speaking, an excellent job â he found he quite liked talking about the sport.
Later that year, he teamed up with a journalist and launched his own podcast, SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, which has since become a popular listen among the beach volleyball community, to the point that Bourne is now lightly chided about being the podcast guy rather than one of the worldâs most formidable players.
While his old identity as an elite athlete was one he missed, to be sure, it was also fun to learn, expand, grow. He began reading, picking up books on everything from Georges St. Pierreâs memoir to one titled âBecoming Supernatural,â which details, per the book description, âthat we have the capacity to tune in to frequencies beyond our material world and receive more orderly coherent streams of consciousness and energy; that we can intentionally change our brain chemistry to initiate profoundly mystical transcendental experiences; and how, if we do this enough times, we can develop the skill of creating a more efficient, balanced, healthy body, a more unlimited mind, and greater access to the realms of spiritual truth.â
Right. No book was off limits. He even wrote a forward for one, to be published later this year.
When Bourne was going to come back, he wasnât going to return the same player or man he was. He was going to be something entirely new. His skill set continued to expand, enrolling in hosting classes to taking on a meditation challenge in which he had to meditate 45 minutes a day.
The kid who couldnât stop moving? Meditating 45 minutes a day?
âEventually I got the hang of it. It naturally progressed, and I donât have that deep anxious feeling where my heart rateâs going up from being anxious just to do something,â he said. âItâs good.â
The time for sitting and thinking is, to the delight of the beach volleyball world, over. Weeks ago, Bourne was cleared by his doctors to begin exercising again. Just light stuff. Nothing serious. But this is Bourne weâre talking about. He got in the gym, then in the sand. He felt fine, fine enough to register for FIVBs in Moscow and Vienna.
He nearly pulled the trigger on Hermosa but decided against it. He had just begun a new treatment â âhalf great white shark, half puma stem cells,â he likes to joke â and didnât know how his body would react.
The initial plan was to wait for Hawaii, the AVPâs final, invitation-only stop of the year. But still: This is Bourne. He couldnât help himself. He texted Crabb, his best friend since the days of the Outrigger Canoe Club in Honolulu, Hawaii.
âIt would be fun,â Bourne said in a text.
That was all Crabb needed.
He was in.
They were in. Tri Bourne was back on the beach.
âI was bored as hell this past year and a half,â Bourne said. âTrevor was the one friend who came over the most and spent the most time with me, and I was pretty boring, because I couldnât do the activities we normally do. Heâd just sit on the couch with me and just be dumb.â
Because sometimes, being dumb is the best rehab a doctor could prescribe.
They do not expect to win Manhattan, despite the last three Manhattan finals featuring one of them every year. Making a Sunday would be an accomplishment. It could be a long-term partnership or just a fun experiment, a welcome back party.
Itâll likely be emotional, hearing his name called. His wife, Gabby, is already prepping for the inevitable waterworks to come.
But when the first ball is served, the past year and a half is finished, done with, over. It may be a new Tri Bourne coming back to the beach, but heâs still here, he said, âto slay the dragons.â
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