John Sutton didn’t exactly give Dalhausser that same 2017 matte gray Porsche Panamera Turbo so he could play on the AVP with him.
But it didn’t hurt that he had one he wasn’t using.
And Sutton?
John Sutton is living the American dream and, along the way, playing with house money. He’s handsome, athletic, and retired, so to speak, at 40. He’s also been Phil Dalhausser’s AVP partner four times, most recently two weeks ago in New Orleans.
“I live my life under this idea that if you don’t go for it or ask for it, you’re never going to get it,” Sutton said. “You know what I mean? I’m not afraid to ask somebody to do something. When everyone else was like, ‘I wouldn’t even ask Phil to play with me.’ I did.”
And you know what?
“It’s my best sponsor to date,” Dalhausser said with a laugh. “That car is worth quite a bit of money and in four tournaments I haven’t gotten that type of money, per tournament, in my career.”
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Dalhausser, 43, is in the discussion of the greatest big men to ever play beach volleyball. He’s won every FIVB and AVP award imaginable, played in four Olympics, two with Todd Rogers — they won gold in 2008 in Beijing — and two with Nick Lucena.
The “Thin Beast” retired from international competition after the 2021 pro beach volleyball season. He said then he planned to still play some AVPs, both because he wanted to and to fulfill sponsor obligations.
So last July when Dalhausser announced that his partner for AVP Denver was going to be a guy named John Sutton, pretty much everyone asked the same question:
Who the hell was John Sutton?
John Sutton had, in fact, played on the AVP before. In 2017 and 2018, he and Joe Keller lost in the first rounds of the Manhattan Beach qualifier. In 2019, they tried again and lost in the qualifiers in Huntington Beach, Seattle, the MBO again, and, finally Hawai’i. You can’t say they weren’t persistent: Sutton and Keller got into the 2021 AVP Atlanta qualifer, and — you guessed it — lost again.
So it was understandable if even the most diehard AVP fan hadn’t heard of Sutton when he teamed with the legendary big man.
But how?
It started on a plane in 2019.
Dalhausser played most of the last seven years of his international career with Nick Lucena.
The 6-foot Sutton, who splits time between homes in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Charlotte, North Carolina, takes it from there.
“I became friends with Nick and Phil kind of by happenstance. My last company was kind of a private-equity firm meets digital operations called Red Ventures. And I traveled a lot. Like 250,000 miles a year because I ran all of our international operations. So long story short, Charlotte is a hub for American Airlines. And I played a little volleyball in college and stayed around it, but just casually to stay in shape.
“And I was on a flight to L.A. and in first class. And this lady goes, ‘Will you switch seats with me?’ And I was like that’s fine, whatever. And then this guy gets on and he’s like, ‘Hey, you’re in my seat.’ So I just scooted over.
“He had a volleyball bag.”
So Sutton asked if he played.
“A little,” Lucena replied.
“I didn’t recognize him. He had a beard at the time and we were on this flight for about four hours and I started asking Nick about the business. And I was realizing that most of the folks in volleyball, even at the highest pro levels, they haven’t been exposed to negotiations, to how businesses make money, how account managers make decision on how they allocate money, they just scrap to get money.”
(Side note: Lucena and Sutton share September 22 as their birthdays.)
Sutton told him what he did for a living, which included that “I run a couple of hundred-million-dollar marketing budgets and I had Red Ventures, and I told him, ‘Next time you have a couple of deals come through, let me see them and I’ll give you advice for free.’ I didn’t want anything out of it.”
They took him up on it, “and I became good friends with Nick and Phil and helped them with business stuff.”
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Business stuff has become increasingly more important to Dalhausser.
“In 2018 I was reading a lot of self-help books, like Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield type of books. And a lot of them talked about making a vision board. And I was like it’s a little cheesy, but why not? It will take me like five to 10 minutes. Because I know what I want.
“At the time, I saw this Porsche Panamera driving around the neighborhood. I was like, man, if I ever spend money on a car, that’s going to be the car right there. That car was just so sweet.
“So I put the Porsche up there. Two of the things on that vision board have come true. The Porsche, and I have volleyball courts packed with adults. I wanted to start adult leagues in Orlando. Now our adult leagues sell out within two hours of registration.”
There were four things on that board.
“I’ve been into real estate investing for a while and at one point I had like 14 units and I sold them all except one and I invested passively into a company that buys apartment complexes and mobile-home parks. Whenever I would do a deal or think about investing I would look at the numbers and check out the area and really do my due diligence. And I said, ‘I really think I can do this.’ Which was a long way of saying that at some point I want to be an operator of an apartment complex. Buy along with a team an apartment complex.
“And the fourth one is, I’ve always wanted land, like five acres, have a garden, chickens, on a lake. That’s my fourth one.”
Lucena knew of Dalhausser’s vision board, which he had as the background of his cell phone.
“And he made fun of me for it,” Dalhausser said.
Sutton has a beach court in his backyard in Charlotte. During the pandemic, he got a call from his friend, beach pro Adam Roberts, who has a court at his place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
“When they took all the nets down in California, I was working like 100 hours a week in private equity,” Sutton recalled. “I didn’t have time to practice volleyball like these guys. But all of sudden during the pandemic I’m working from home and Adam calls me and asks if I could house a couple of the pros.”
Roberts said they’d split time between his house in Myrtle Beach and Sutton’s, if that was OK.
“And you can train with us,” Roberts said.
Sutton was quick to say he was in.
“That was the first time I really tried to get back in shape and play a little bit. Then I think it was in the summer of 2021 and A-Rob and Nick and I were in this ice cream shop. And I had this Porsche, slightly older, I had kind of customized it. It was a car I gave to myself as a gift for doing something well in my business. But I left it in L.A. I never drove it very often because I coudn’t go out there because of the pandemic and everything else, and I was asking them if I should sell it. And Nick goes, ‘I think that’s Phil’s dream car.’
“And A-Rob, being who he is, said, ‘Tell Phil that John will give it to him or give him a good deal if he plays the next season with John.’ And it was kind of a joke and Nick was like, ‘He would 100 percent do that.’
“So I texted Phil jokingly the picture of the Porsche and said ‘This is yours but you have to play the next season with me.’ Nick was going to still play internationally so I assumed they were going to split up.
“So that’s how it started. It was worth like 50 grand or something like that.”
Dalhausser remembers it exactly that way.
“That’s how it happened,” Dalhausser said.
Dalhausser and Sutton both said something about him paying fair value and making it legit, and the deal was on.
“I didn’t drive it anyway. And there never was a number of tournaments, but we just said if we can get in and I’m in shape and we can make it, we’d try to play.”
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Sutton, who grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana, was an accomplished tennis player in high school where he played volleyball as a club sport.
“I didn’t grow up rich or anything like that,” he said.
He also started a business selling high-end electronics while he was in high school, “back when nobody was doing it and turned into a pretty good business.” He kept the business through his time at Indiana University and at the same time coached at a local high school.
“It kept me out of trouble in college,” Sutton said.
At 26, he had a marketing company he sold to Red Ventures in Charlotte.
That company has grown into a “10 billion dollar business,” Sutton said.
Now Sutton has a new company called Mansion, which focuses on real estate.
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So there they were in New Orleans.
“Playing behind him is a dream,” Sutton said. “Walking on the court with Phil is just fun.”
Phil Dalhausser, left, and John Sutton/Bryan Malloch photo
Sutton was giving it his all and Dalhausser was being patient with his friend.
“If I stay relaxed and have fun I play better,” Sutton said. “One of the timeouts we were talking about real estate.”
In New Orleans, they opened with a tough 27-25, 21-11 loss to Paul Lotman and Silila Tucker. The next night, after hours of storm delays, they lost to Jacob Landel and Andrew Dentler 22-20, 21-18.
“It’s a challenge for me,” Dalhausser said. “If I can make these guys sweat a little out here with a guy who’s been busy building companies, I’m cool with that.”
“We’re right on the cusp,” Sutton said.
Same as last year. Which turned out to be quite a 2022 season for Dalhausser, who was hardly retired.
He won the first two tournaments of the year, in Austin with Andy Benesh and in New Orleans with Casey Patterson.
Then, in AVP Denver, Sutton got the nod.
“My goal has been to win a match. I didn’t want to embarrass Phil or the AVP. I wanted to be able to hold my own out there.”
That doesn’t seem lost on his AVP competitors.
“Most of the pro athletes have been really receptive to me giving it a shot. Maybe there are some people who feel it’s an unfair advantage, but I think most people would take that same opportunity if it presented itself,” Sutton said. “I mean, I have family, I have businesses, and people are like you must feel pressure on the court with Phil. I feel pressure when I’m driving to the parking lot of my company knowing that I’ve got 5,000 car payments from people who are relying on me to be successful in this business.”
Sutton’s coach, Ticão, gives a word during the 2022 AVP Denver/photo courtesy of Josh Glazebook
Sutton and Dalhausser went 1-2 in Denver, losing 21-17, 24-26, 15-13 in the first round to Jordan Hoppe and Diego Perez. They posted a win over qualifiers Jeffrey Houghton and Trenton Sellers before bowing out to Benesh and Miles Evans.
Dalhausser took a third in Hermosa Beach with Patterson, and then teamed with Sutton again, this time in late July in Fort Lauderdale. They went 0-2, but they did lose 24-22 in the second set to Chase Budinger and Troy Field.
Dalhausser got another third in Atlanta with Patterson and then was joined by Sutton again for the Manhattan Beach Open. Sutton had no more success at MBO than he did previously.
Finally, Dalhausser and Patterson got third again in Chicago before he teamed with Taylor Crabb to win in Tavares.
Clearly Dalhausser can play with anyone, regardless of style, personality or level.
“I assume he’s like this with other people, too, but he’s so relaxed all the time,” Sutton said. “But probably what makes him great is like at the end of that first set (in New Orleans), he was like, ‘100 percent my fault. Last two points, great pass, my fault.’ He forgot about the eight shanked passes or four balls I hit into the net. He’s a great teammate.”
Dalhausser never seemed to give it another thought.
“There’s a reason he’s in the position he’s in,” Dalhausser said. “He’s a sharp guy. Sometimes guys like that can over-think. They’re thinking rather than reacting, especially in high-level sports where things are moving quicker. He plays pretty well. He hasn’t gotten the amount of reps that all of us have.”
Where he has gotten reps is in business.
“He’s a great volleyball player, of course, but he wants to be great in his next thing, which is investing in real estate,” Sutton said. “That’s what we’ve connected on lately.”
***
So that 2017 Porsche Panamera Turbo lives in Orlando.
“Oh, dude, it’s sweet,” Dalhausser said with a smile. “As awesome as you think it would be.”
You have to wonder how fast it can go?
“That’s a question for my wife,” Dalhausser said. “She’s got a little bit of a lead foot. I’m more like 10 miles over and I set cruise control.”
John Sutton had a professional photographer take this shot after the Porsche was customized.
And here’s the kicker: Jennifer Dalhausser drives it more than Phil. He mostly is behind the wheel of the family Tahoe, especially when he’s got their kids, 9-year-old Sebastian and 8-year-old Sophia.
“It’s a little tough for me to get into it, honestly,” Dalhausser said with a laugh. “So she drives it more. I drive it on the weekend around town.”
John Sutton, right, tries to get the ball past Paul Lotman at AVP New Orleans/Rick Atwood photo
