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Old timers day Kiraly, Johnson advance to gold medal game
Posted: Saturday July 25, 1998 08:32 PM
NEW YORK (AP) -- Two of beach volleyball's old dudes from Southern California will play for the Goodwill Games' gold medal. Karch Kiraly, who turns 38 in November, and Adam Johnson, a relative kid of 33, beat Australians Julien Prosser and Leo Zahner 12-2, 12-10 to reach Sunday's championship match. "I love playing beach volleyball and trying to be part of the best team," Kiraly said. Johnson said that when Kiraly steps on court, "it's like - 'Oh, the aura is coming over into me and I gotta raise the level of my play.' I sure did when I first started with him." They will play for the title against the world's No. 1 pair, Guilherme Marques and Para Ferreria of Brazil, who beat Argentina's Martin Conde and Esteban Martinez, 12-5, 12-10. Kiraly, one of the sport's pioneers from San Clemente, California, and Johnson, from Laguna Beach, California, have won almost $4 million in prize money in their careers, and their experience showed against twentysomethings Prosser, whose nickname is "Thunder," and Zahner, who hails from the Queensland town of Kangaroo Point. In the first game, Kiraly, the 1996 Olympic gold medalist, and Johnson ran off nine straight points for a 11-1 lead. In the second game, Australia tied it 9-9 and 10-10 before Kiraly hit a pair of kills on his serve to win the match. "He's just a machine," Zahner, 24, said of Kiraly. "He doesn't make many errors. He's almost boring to watch sometimes because he just doesn't make many errors. He's the ultimate volleyball player, ever. You just have to give him credit. He's a fantastic athlete. I hope I'm like that at 37." Kiraly and Johnson led in every statistical category, including digs (20-14) and blocks (7-3). Johnson also served the only four aces in the match.
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