Karch Kiraly plays in the sand for a living, but his sport is more than technicolor bathing suits trimmed in neon, the smell of suntan oil and sand pasted to bronzed bodies.
Kiraly made more than $700,000 last year playing pro beach volleyball, which helps to explain a busy Thursday morning of phone calls from his car on the way to practice at a California beach.There were days - long ago - when Kiraly would settle for a beachside pay phone to call for pizza delivery. Days when car phones and call waiting weren't a part of King Karch's domain.
"Yesterday at the beach, we were joking around with a couple of people," Kiraly said as he drove from his San Clemente home to Santa Monica. "They asked, `What are you doing?' We told them we were training for the pro tour. They said, `You can make a living doing that?' "
Not just a living, but a lifestyle.
Kiraly and teammate Kent Steffes will compete today and Sunday in the Old Spice Boca Raton Open at the Boca Raton Resort and Club, the first stop on a 26-event tour that will pay more than $4 million in prize money by September. Kiraly, 33, made more than $467,878 in prize earnings last year, and another $300,000 in endorsements and appearances.
"A hot, beautiful day on the beach - what a better way to make a living," Kiraly said. "It's an opportunity I never thought we'd have. Ten or 15 years ago, we just envisioned playing for a trophy and a handshake, up the coast of California."
But this thing got too big for the California borders to hold. By 1982, the tour added Clearwater, in '83 the Association of Volleyball Professionals formed and prize money for 13 stops averaged $10,000.
Ten years later, the AVP/Miller Lite Tour hit the $3 million mark in prize money, took to the sand inside Madison Square Garden, and went live on NBC.
Now, it's 1994 and the explosion continues to mushroom.
"Indoor volleyball is popular every four years in the Olympics," Kiraly said. "Beach volleyball is not country versus country. It's a clash of personalities. With two on a side, instead of six, you can figure out who did what. When they shaved their heads in the '92 Olympics, I couldn't tell who did what and I know those guys."
And as beach volleyball grows so does the legend that is Kiraly. He is, among many things, a two-time Olympic gold medalist. He was the tour's poster boy when it needed one most. But as a burgeoning tour changes, its ambassador and his humility stay the same.
"It's not the money," he said. "It's wanting to be the best in any given weekend or competition."
Kiraly would still be driving up the California coast in a Volkswagen bus to play the nine or 10 events, if that's all there was. It's about calling the sand your turf that day, being King Karch.
He works as hard as he did during his three NCAA championship runs at UCLA, or during either Olympics. This is not Santa Barbara High, where he'd swing his arms, do a deep knee bend, then try to spike the ball so hard it bounced to the gym roof.
Kiraly stretches his 6-feet-2, 200-pound body up to an hour a day. He lifts weights and practices three days on the beach. Friday he travels, and weekends he plays. Monday is family.
Kiraly is devoted to his wife Janna, and sons Kristian, 3, and Kory, 2. He relishes in the fact that last year he spent a career-low 60 nights "out of his own bed." Not like those Olympic days when Kiraly would spend an "absurd" 215 days away.
If it wasn't for family, Kiraly might still be hanging out with friends at the beach until dark, wasting time and stacking beer cans. Now, the beach is his workplace.
"I have purpose, and I work with intensity," he said. "I might go back to the same spot later that day, but we take shovels, a pail, little trucks, and make sand castles."
How long the beach will remain Kiraly's office is uncertain. He is considering the '96 Olympics, the first in which beach volleyball will be a medal sport. But that depends on if the body continues to wake up on Mondays free of pain.
"Right now, I feel great," he said. "But hey, I gotta go. I got a call holding."