page_title: Beach volleyball
section_title: Attack
hierarchical_section_title: Beach volleyball / Skills / Attack
caption_attribution_description: Beijing Olympics, Men's Beach volley, Final: Phil Dalhausser in white v. Fábio Luiz Magalhães of Brazil This was the block that scored the final point in the gold medal game for the US Beach Volleyball team at the Beijing Olympics.
context_page_description: Beach volleyball is a team sport played by two teams of two players on a sand court divided by a net. As in indoor volleyball, the objective of the game is to send the ball over the net and to ground it on the opponent's side of the court, and to prevent the same effort by the opponent.
  Each team is allowed up to three touches to return the ball across the net, and individual players may not touch the ball twice consecutively except after making a block touch. The ball is put in play with a serve—a hit by the server from behind the rear court boundary over the net to the opponents. The rally continues until the ball is grounded on the playing court, goes "out", or a fault is made in the attempt to return the ball. The team that wins the rally scores a point and serves to start the following rally. The four players serve in the same sequence throughout the match, changing server each time a rally is won by the receiving team.
  Beach volleyball most likely originated in 1915 on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii, while the modern two-player game originated in Santa Monica, California. It has been an Olympic sport since the 1996 Summer Olympics.
context_section_description: A beach volleyball attack can be categorized as either a spike or a shot. A spike involves hitting the ball hard with one open hand on a downward trajectory from above the top of the net. A shot is a relatively soft attack used to place a ball into an open (undefended) area of the court. Unlike indoor volleyball, a wide variety of shots are utilized in beach volleyball due to the fewer defenders on court. Common shots used in beach volleyball include: roll shots, in which the attacker puts a lot of topspin on the ball so that it has an arcing trajectory that will go over the block then drop quickly; cut shots, in which the shot crosses the net at sharp angles; pokeys, in which the ball is contacted with the attacking player's knuckles; and dinks, in which the ball is directed very softly low over the net.
caption: Phil Dalhausser attempts to block Fábio Luiz Magalhães's attack
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